Archive

Quotes

’Tis the destroyer, or the devil, that scatters plagues about the world.

—Cotton Mather, 1693

The law’s made to take care o’ raskills.

—George Eliot, 1860

My stern chase after time is, to borrow a simile from Tom Paine, like the race of a man with a wooden leg after a horse.

—John Quincy Adams, 1844

No man has any natural authority over his fellow man.

—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1762

Among famous traitors of history, one might mention the weather.

—Ilka Chase, 1969

A private sin is not so prejudicial in this world as a public indecency.

—Miguel de Cervantes, 1615

Man has here two and a half minutes—one to smile, one to sigh, and half a one to love; for in the midst of this minute he dies.

—Jean Paul, 1795

Suffering has its limit, but fears are endless.

—Pliny the Younger, c. 108

For what do we live but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn?

—Jane Austen, 1813

To make laws that man cannot and will not obey serves to bring all law into contempt.

—Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1860

All moanday, tearsday, wailsday, thumpsday, frightday, shatterday till the fear of the Law.

—James Joyce, 1939

See one promontory (said Socrates of old), one mountain, one sea, one river, and see all.

—Robert Burton, c. 1620

If you stain clear water with filth, you will never find a drink.

—Aeschylus, 458 BC