You can’t find the soul with a scalpel.
—Gustave Flaubert, c. 1880
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Quotes
Petty laws breed great crimes.
—Ouida, 1880Home is the girl’s prison and the woman’s workhouse.
—George Bernard Shaw, 1903The most dangerous madmen are those created by religion, and people whose aim is to disrupt society always know how to make good use of them.
—Denis Diderot, 1777It seems to me that we all look at nature too much and live with her too little.
—Oscar Wilde, 1897’Tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers.
—William Shakespeare, c. 1595We must consider that we shall be a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world.
—John Winthrop, 1630New things are always ugly.
—Willa Cather, 1921There are many civil questions that arise between individuals in which it is not so important the controversy be settled one way or another as that it be settled.
—William Howard Taft, 1921The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.
—G.K. Chesterton, 1908Thanks be to God: since my leaving drinking of wine, I do find myself much better and do mind my business better, and do spend less money, and less time lost in idle company.
—Samuel Pepys, 1662Secrets are rarely betrayed or discovered according to any program our fear has sketched out.
—George Eliot, 1860Every creature in the world is like a book and a picture, to us, and a mirror.
—Alain de Lille, c. 1200