Archive

Quotes

Most vegetarians I ever saw looked enough like their food to be classed as cannibals.

—Finley Peter Dunne, 1900

The great difficulty lies in trying to transpose last night’s moment to a day which has no knowledge of it.

—Zora Neale Hurston, 1942

He who dies of epidemic disease is a martyr.

—Muhammad, c. 630

It raineth every day, and the weather represents our tearful despair on a large scale.

—Mary Boykin Chesnut, 1865

The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative on the day after the revolution.

—Hannah Arendt, 1970

I hate the present modes of living and getting a living. Farming and shopkeeping and working at a trade or profession are all odious to me. I should relish getting my living in a simple, primitive fashion.

—Henry David Thoreau, 1855

Tomorrow we take to the mighty sea.

—Horace, 23 BC

Dread attends the unknown.

—Nadine Gordimer, 1998

If we pretend to respect the artist at all, we must allow him his freedom of choice, in the face, in particular cases, of innumerable presumptions that the choice will not fructify. Art derives a considerable part of its beneficial exercise from flying in the face of presumptions.

—Henry James, 1884

One great reason why many children abandon themselves wholly to silly sports and trifle away all their time insipidly is because they have found their curiosity baulked and their inquiries neglected.

—John Locke, 1693

It is not a case we are treating; it is a living, palpitating, alas, too often suffering fellow creature.

—John Brown, 1904

If the people be the governors, who shall be governed?

—John Cotton, c. 1636

The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.

—John Nance Garner, c. 1967