As matron and mistress will differ in temper and tone, so will the friend be distinct from the faithless parasite.
—Horace, c. 20 BC
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Quotes
Where it is a duty to worship the sun, it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.
—John Morley, 1872Friendship was given by nature to be an assistant to virtue, not a companion to vice.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, c. 45 BCIt has always been my practice to cast a long paragraph in a single mold, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to suspend the action of the pen till I had given the last polish to my work.
—Edward Gibbon, c. 1790Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.
—Gore Vidal, 1973If the human race wants to go to hell in a basket, technology can help it get there by jet.
—Charles M. Allen, 1967The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us.
—Theodor Adorno, 1951Imagination is the secret and marrow of civilization. It is the very eye of faith.
—Henry Ward Beecher, 1887I have been ever of the opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.
—Benjamin Disraeli, 1844Everything remembered is dear, endearing, touching, precious. At least the past is safe—though we didn’t know it at the time.
—Susan Sontag, 1973God is a concept by which we measure our pain.
—John Lennon, 1970The best moment of love is when the lover leaves in the taxi.
—Michel Foucault, c. 1982It is easy to distinguish between the joking that reflects good breeding and that which is coarse—the one, if aired at an apposite moment of mental relaxation, is becoming in the most serious of men, whereas the other is unworthy of any free person, if the content is indecent or the expression obscene.
—Cicero, c. 44 BC