The sole business of a seaman onshore who has to go to sea again is to take as much pleasure as he can.
—Leigh Hunt, 1820
Archive
Quotes
Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1947There is nothing sillier than a silly laugh.
—Catullus, c. 60 BCFire destroys that which feeds it.
—Simone Weil, c. 1940Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco pipes of those who diffuse it; it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker.
—George Eliot, 1876I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!
—George H. W. Bush, 1990What a glut of books! Who can read them? As already, we shall have a vast chaos and confusion of books; we are oppressed with them, our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning.
—Robert Burton, 1621Whatsoever is, is in God.
—Benedict de Spinoza, 1677Anyone who doesn’t know foreign languages knows nothing of his own.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1821Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
—W.H. Auden, 1957Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.
—G.K. Chesterton, 1928Resorting to the law to resolve a dispute is a declaration of spiritual bankruptcy.
—Quentin Crisp, 1984It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard for their own interest.
—Adam Smith, 1776