Friend! It is a common word, often lightly used. Like other good and beautiful things, it may be tarnished by careless handling.
—Harriet Jacobs, 1861
Archive
Quotes
If the human race wants to go to hell in a basket, technology can help it get there by jet.
—Charles M. Allen, 1967You furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war.
—William Randolph Hearst, 1898Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.
—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688Every memory everyone has ever had will eventually be underwater.
—Anthony Doerr, 2006No wise man ever wished to be younger.
—Jonathan Swift, 1706It is easy to distinguish between the joking that reflects good breeding and that which is coarse—the one, if aired at an apposite moment of mental relaxation, is becoming in the most serious of men, whereas the other is unworthy of any free person, if the content is indecent or the expression obscene.
—Cicero, c. 44 BCWhen the missionaries first came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, “Let us pray.” We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.
—Desmond Tutu, 1984The appointed thing comes at the appointed time in the appointed way.
—Myrtle Reed, 1910No preacher is listened to but time, which gives us the same train and turn of thought that elder people have in vain tried to put into our heads before.
—Jonathan Swift, 1706Even diseases have lost their prestige, there aren’t so many of them left.
—Louis-Ferdinand Céline, 1960The law is not the same at morning and at night.
—George Herbert, c. 1633The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of a gun.
—P.G. Wodehouse, 1929