Don’t hit a man at all if you can avoid it, but if you have to hit him, knock him out.
—Theodore Roosevelt, 1916
Archive
Quotes
O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.
—Horace, c. 8 BCChildhood knows what it wants—to leave childhood behind.
—Jean Cocteau, 1947Every country has the government it deserves.
—Joseph de Maistre, 1811The charm, one might say the genius, of memory is that it is choosy, chancy, and temperamental: it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chawing a hunk of melon in the dust.
—Elizabeth Bowen, 1955Those who cross the seas change their climate but not their character.
—Roman proverbWe should have a great many fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves.
—John Locke, 1690Many, many steeples would have to be stacked one on top of another to reach from the bottom to the surface of the sea. It is down there that the sea folk live.
—Hans Christian Andersen, 1837God is our father, but even more is God our mother.
—Pope John Paul I, 1978The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love.
—Donald Barthelme, 1964There are truths that prove their discoverers witless.
—Karl Kraus, 1909A college degree is a social certificate, not a proof of competence.
—Elbert Hubbard, 1911A sick child is always the mother’s property; her own feelings generally make it so.
—Jane Austen, 1816