Archive

Quotes

He that serves God for money will serve the Devil for better wages.

—Roger L’Estrange, 1692

The men of today are born to criticize; of Achilles they see only the heel.

—Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, 1880

The nature of God is a circle, of which the center is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere.

—Empedocles, c. 450 BC

Despotism achieves great things illegally; democracy doesn’t even take the trouble to achieve small things legally.

—Honoré de Balzac, 1831

All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it.

—Henry David Thoreau, 1849

Don’t hit a man at all if you can avoid it, but if you have to hit him, knock him out.

—Theodore Roosevelt, 1916

Whatever the apparent cause of any riots may be, the real one is always want of happiness.

—Thomas Paine, 1792

The body is an instrument which only gives off music when it is used as a body.

—Anaïs Nin, 1935

Is all our fire of shipwreck wood?

—Robert Browning, 1862

We have forgotten how to be good guests, how to walk lightly on the earth as its other creatures do.

—Barbara Ward, 1972

No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning.

—Cyril Connolly, 1944

Plagues are as certain as death and taxes.

—Richard Krause, 1982

Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth; without rain there would be no life.

—John Updike, 1989