It is the little causes, long continued, which are considered as bringing about the greatest changes of the earth.
—James Hutton, 1795
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Quotes
Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.
—Henry David Thoreau, 1852Unexemplary words and unfounded doctrines are avoided by the noble person. Why utter them?
—Dong Zhongshu, c. 120 BCThe work of art, just like any fragment of human life considered in its deepest meaning, seems to me devoid of value if it does not offer the hardness, the rigidity, the regularity, the luster on every interior and exterior facet, of the crystal.
—André Breton, 1937At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference.
—Søren Kierkegaard, 1850A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch.
—Jane Austen, 1814Misfortune, n. The kind of fortune that never misses.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1906There’s hope a great man’s memory may outlive his life half a year.
—William Shakespeare, c. 1600Our crime against criminals is that we treat them as villains.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1898A hick town is one where there is no place to go where you shouldn’t go.
—Alexander Woollcott, c. 1935Avoid the talk of men. For talk is mischievous, light, and easily raised, but hard to bear and difficult to be rid of. Talk never wholly dies away when many people voice her: even talk is in some ways divine.
—Hesiod, c. 700 BCDrugs, cataplasms, and whiskey are stupid substitutes for the dignity and potency of divine mind and its efficacy to heal.
—Mary Baker Eddy, 1908Iron may break gold, but water remains whole.
—Ge Hong, c. 300