I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue.
—Xenocrates, c. 350 BC
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Quotes
This is a fault common to all singers, that among their friends they will never sing when they are asked; unasked, they will never desist.
—Horace, c. 35 BCNo poems can please long, nor live, that are written by water drinkers.
—Horace, 35 BCYou can’t find the soul with a scalpel.
—Gustave Flaubert, c. 1880How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.
—Søren Kierkegaard, 1843The greatest veneration one can show the law is to keep a watch on it.
—Nadine Gordimer, 1971Today’s city is the most vulnerable social structure ever conceived by man.
—Martin Oppenheimer, 1969Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
—H.G. Wells, 1920A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
—James Joyce, 1922Quarrels would not last long if the fault was only on one side.
—La Rochefoucauld, 1665Despotism subjects a nation to one tyrant, democracy to many.
—Marguerite Gardiner, 1839Many are the wonders of the world, and none so wonderful as man.
—Sophocles, c. 441 BCI doubt that we have any right to pity the dead for their own sakes.
—Lord Byron, 1817