Archive

Quotes

Man is merely a more perfect animal than the rest. He reasons better.

—Napoleon Bonaparte, 1816

Our crime against criminals is that we treat them as villains.

—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1898

I take it as a prime cause of the present confusion of society that it is too sickly and too doubtful to use pleasure frankly as a test of value.

—Rebecca West, 1939

I hate the sight of monkeys; they remind me so of poor relations.

—Henry Luttrell, 1820

Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 63 BC

A wise woman never yields by appointment. It should always be an unforeseen happiness.

—Stendhal, 1822

No families take so little medicine as those of doctors, except those of apothecaries.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1860

We and the dead ride quick at night. 

—Gottfried August Bürger, 1773

A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.

—David Foster Wallace, 2000

What is the city but the people?

—William Shakespeare, 1608

One may like the love and despise the lover.

—George Farquhar, 1706

All people have the common desire to be elevated in honor, but all people have something still more elevated in themselves without knowing it.

—Mencius, c. 330 BC

For, say they, when cruising in an empty ship, if you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least.

—Herman Melville, 1851