Be courteous to all but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.
—George Washington, 1783
Archive
Quotes
Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.
—Jane Austen, 1818Journalists belong in the gutter, because that is where the ruling classes throw their guilty secrets.
—Gerald Priestland, 1988Colonialism has meant selling our ore and being left with the holes.
—Samora Moisés Machel, c. 1976A merchant may, perhaps, be a man of an enlarged mind, but there is nothing in trade connected with an enlarged mind.
—Samuel Johnson, 1773The children of the revolution are always ungrateful, and the revolution must be grateful that it is so.
—Ursula K. Le Guin, 1983I have always found it in mine own experience an easier matter to devise many and profitable inventions than to dispose of one of them to the good of the author himself.
—Hugh Plat, 1595Oil! Our secret god, our secret sharer, our magic wand, fulfiller of our every desire, our coconspirator, the sine qua non in all we do!
—Margaret Atwood, 2015Children and fools cannot lie.
—John Heywood, 1546One is never as unhappy as one thinks, nor as happy as one hopes.
—La Rochefoucauld, 1664Animals are such agreeable friends—they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.
—George Eliot, 1857Animals, in their generation, are wiser than the sons of men, but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass.
—Joseph Addison, 1711They say that gifts persuade even the gods.
—Euripides, 431 BC