Petty laws breed great crimes.
—Ouida, 1880
Archive
Quotes
The earth is our existence, and our body is attached to the earth.
—Daulat Qazi, c. 1650Motherhood is the strangest thing, it can be like being one’s own Trojan horse.
—Rebecca West, 1959The more sifted, the finer the flour; the more often repeated, the rougher the gossip.
—Korean proverbWar is fear cloaked in courage.
—William Westmoreland, 1966For the merchant, even honesty is a financial speculation.
—Charles Baudelaire, c. 1865Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent.
—Louis Brandeis, 1928All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.
—Aristotle, c. 330 BCRevolutionaries are greater sticklers for formality than conservatives.
—Italo Calvino, 1957The three little sentences that will get you through life. Number 1: Cover for me. Number 2: Oh, good idea, Boss! Number 3: It was like that when I got here.
—Nell Scovell, 1991Resorting to the law to resolve a dispute is a declaration of spiritual bankruptcy.
—Quentin Crisp, 1984One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.
—E.B. White, 1977No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.
—Bertrand Russell, 1961