The 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, 1963
Archive
Quotes
To safeguard one’s health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness indeed.
—La Rochefoucauld, 1678I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.
—Samuel Johnson, 1773The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
—Miguel de Cervantes, 1615Fame is but the empty noise of madmen.
—Epictetus, c. 100In life our absent friend is far away: / But death may bring our friend exceeding near.
—Christina Rossetti, 1881There 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, 1684Inventor, n. A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers, and springs and believes it civilization.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1911True friendship withstands time, distance, and silence.
—Isabel Allende, 2000From a man’s face, I can read his character. If I can see him walk, I know his thoughts.
—Gaius Petronius Arbiter, c. 60We get a deal o’ useless things about us, only because we’ve got the money to spend.
—George Eliot, 1860The Mughal’s nature is such that they demand miracles, but if a miracle were to be performed by some upright follower of our religion, they would say that it had been brought about by magic and sorcery. They would strike him down with spears or would stone him to death.
—Fr. Antonio Monserrate, 1590Just to fill the hour—that is happiness.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844