If I lose at play, I blaspheme, and if my fellow loses, he blasphemes. So that God is always sure to be the loser.
—John Donne, 1623
Archive
Quotes
Traveling is like flirting with life. It’s like saying, “I would stay here and love you, but I have to go; this is my station.”
—Lisa St. Aubin de Terán, 1989An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.
—James Russell Lowell, c. 1865The envious die not once, but as often as the envied win applause.
—Baltasar Gracián, 1647If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
—Mark Twain, 1894I am not Athenian or Greek but a citizen of the world.
—Socrates, c. 420 BCIf God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.
—Voltaire, 1764Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules, and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence; in other words it is war minus the shooting.
—George Orwell, 1945For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.
—Book of Ecclesiastes, c. 250 BCA true German can’t stand the French, / Yet willingly he drinks their wines.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1832It’s your business when your neighbor’s wall is in flames.
—Horace, 19 BCA man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated has not the art of getting drunk.
—Samuel Johnson, 1779A god cannot procure death for himself, even if he wished it, which, so numerous are the evils of life, has been granted to man as our chief good.
—Pliny the Elder, c. 77