Every ass thinks himself worthy to stand with the king’s horses.
—Gnomologia, 1732
Archive
Quotes
The friend of all humanity is no friend to me.
—Molière, 1666It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter.
—Lewis Strauss, 1954Drunkenness is the very sepulcher / Of man’s wit and his discretion.
—Geoffrey Chaucer, c. 1390Every man is worth just so much as the things he busies himself with.
—Marcus Aurelius, c. 175Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will—whatever we may think.
—Lawrence Durrell, 1957A true German can’t stand the French, / Yet willingly he drinks their wines.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1832“Work” does not exist in a nonliterate world. The primitive hunter or fisherman did no work, any more than does the poet, painter, or thinker of today. Where the whole man is involved there is no work.
—Marshall McLuhan, 1964Rivalry adds so much to the charms of one’s conquests.
—Louisa May Alcott, 1866Memory is necessary for all operations of reasoning.
—Blaise Pascal, c. 1658Colonialism has meant selling our ore and being left with the holes.
—Samora Moisés Machel, c. 1976It’s easy to be independent when you’ve got money. But to be independent when you haven’t got a thing—that’s the Lord’s test.
—Mahalia Jackson, 1966Language is the armory of the human mind and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1817