Almsgiving tends to perpetuate poverty; aid does away with it once and for all.
—Eva Perón, 1949
Archive
Quotes
There never was a good war or a bad peace.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1773Friends are ourselves.
—John Donne, 1603The charm, one might say the genius, of memory is that it is choosy, chancy, and temperamental: it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chawing a hunk of melon in the dust.
—Elizabeth Bowen, 1955There’s folks ’ud hold a sieve under the pump and expect to carry away the water.
—George Eliot, 1859Don’t ever wear artistic jewelry; it wrecks a woman’s reputation.
—Colette, 1944The most fitting occupation for a civilized man is to do nothing.
—Théophile Gautier, c. 1835The important thing, I think, is not to be bitter. You know, if it turns out that there is a God, I don’t think that he’s evil. I think that the worst thing you could say about him is that basically he’s an underachiever. After all, you know, there are worse things in life than death.
—Woody Allen, 1975All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.
—Al Smith, 1933All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.
—Edmund Burke, 1796In the matter of furnishing, I find a certain absence of ugliness far worse than ugliness.
—Colette, 1944I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do—that was one of my favorite things about it—and when I first did it, I felt perverse.
—Diane Arbus, c. 1950Don’t talk to me about naval tradition. It’s nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash.
—Winston Churchill, 1939