Archive

Quotes

Pride and excess bring disaster for man.

—Xunzi, 250 BC

Why is not a rat as good as a rabbit? Why should men eat shrimps and neglect cockroaches?

—Henry Ward Beecher, 1862

The only evidence, so far as I know, about another life is, first, that we have no evidence; and, secondly, that we are rather sorry that we have not, and wish we had.

—Robert G. Ingersoll, 1879

Now there is fame! Of all—hunger, misery, the incomprehension by the public—fame is by far the worst. It is the castigation by God of the artist. It is sad. It is true.

—Pablo Picasso, c. 1961

Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.

—Lucretius, c. 58 BC

I was born without knowing why, I have lived without knowing why, and I am dying without either knowing why or how.

—Pierre Gassendi, 1655

Where it is a duty to worship the sun, it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.

—John Morley, 1872

For most of us, nighttime dreaming brings us closer to our identities and our power than any activity in the waking world.

—Walter Mosley, 2000

We should always presume the disease to be curable until its own nature proves it otherwise.

—Peter Mere Latham, c. 1845

Seamen are the nearest to death and the furthest from God.

—Thomas Fuller, 1732

Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear.

—William Shakespeare, 1592

I will never again command an army in America if we must carry along paid spies. I will banish myself to some foreign country first.

—William Tecumseh Sherman, 1863

In a true democracy, everyone can be upper-class and live in Connecticut.

—Lisa Birnbach, 1980