Archive

Quotes

Gossip isn’t scandal and it’s not merely malicious. It’s chatter about the human race by lovers of the same.

—Phyllis McGinley, 1957

Man is the one name belonging to every nation upon earth: there is one soul and many tongues, one spirit and various sounds; every country has its own speech, but the subjects of speech are common to all.

—Tertullian, c. 217

If 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, 1894

Men have written in the most convincing manner to prove that death is no evil, and this opinion has been confirmed on a thousand celebrated occasions by the weakest of men as well as by heroes. Even so I doubt whether any sensible person has ever believed it, and the trouble men take to convince others as well as themselves that they do shows clearly that it is no easy undertaking. 

—La Rochefoucauld, 1665

Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.

—Lucretius, c. 58 BC

Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.

—Hebrews, c. 60

Nature never breaks her own laws.

—Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1500

Despotism subjects a nation to one tyrant, democracy to many.

—Marguerite Gardiner, 1839

Whatsoever is, is in God.

—Benedict de Spinoza, 1677

Even members of the nobility, let alone persons of no consequence, would do well not to have children. 

—Yoshida Kenko, c. 1330

There is nothing worse for mortals than a wandering life.

—Homer, c. 750 BC

It is far, far better and much safer to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought.

—John Kenneth Galbraith, 1958

You are dust, and to dust you shall return.

—Book of Genesis, c. 800 BC