I cannot bear a parent’s tears.
—Virgil, c. 25 BC
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Quotes
There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness.
—H.L. Mencken, 1920All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full.
—Book of Ecclesiastes, c. 250 BCDespotism achieves great things illegally; democracy doesn’t even take the trouble to achieve small things legally.
—Honoré de Balzac, 1831All the married heiresses I have known have shipwrecked.
—Benjamin Disraeli, 1880Men are generally more pleased with a widespread than with a great reputation.
—Pliny the Younger, c. 110Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.
—Shimon Peres, 1995If the heavens were all parchment, and the trees of the forest all pens, and every human being were a scribe, it would still be impossible to record all that I have learned from my teachers.
—Jochanan ben Zakkai, c. 75Whoever has died is freed from sin.
—St. Paul, c. 50Give me chastity and continence, but not just now.
—Saint Augustine, 397The Founding Fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents. So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called an education. School is where you go between when your parents can’t take you and industry can’t take you.
—John Updike, 1963Laws, like houses, lean on one another.
—Edmund Burke, 1765There are some who, if a cat accidentally comes into the room, though they neither see it nor are told of it, will presently be in a sweat and ready to die away.
—Increase Mather, 1684