Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1906
Archive
Quotes
Man is no man, but a wolf, to a stranger.
—Plautus, c. 200 BCInfectious disease is one of the few genuine adventures left in the world.
—Hans Zinsser, 1935People can say what they like about the eternal verities, love and truth and so on, but nothing’s as eternal as the dishes.
—Margaret Mahy, 1985Men, my dear, are very queer animals—a mixture of horse nervousness, ass stubbornness, and camel malice.
—T. H. Huxley, 1895One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.
—Elbert Hubbard, 1911You never enjoy the world aright, till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars.
—Thomas Traherne, c. 1670It is men who make a city, not walls or ships.
—Thucydides, 410 BCThe most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science.
—Albert Einstein, 1930It is impossible to translate the poets. Can you translate music?
—Voltaire, c. 1732Those from whom we were born have long since departed, and those with whom we grew up exist only in memory. We, too, through the approach of death, become, as it were, trees growing on the sandy bank of a river.
—Bhartrihari, c. 400When a man dies, and his kin are glad of it, they say, “He is better off.”
—Edgar Watson Howe, 1911As to the sea itself, love it you cannot. Why should you? I will never believe again the sea was ever loved by anyone whose life was married to it. It is the creation of omnipotence, which is not of humankind and understandable, and so the springs of its behavior are hidden.
—H.M. Tomlinson, 1912