Archive

Quotes

A dead enemy always smells good.

—Aulus Vitellius, 69

An honest man is all right even if he’s an idiot…but a crook must have brains.

—Maxim Gorky, 1902

If you wish to avoid foreign collision, you had better abandon the ocean.

—Henry Clay, 1812

Whoever gulps down wine as a horse gulps down water is called a Scythian.

—Athenaeus, c. 230

There is nothing worse for mortals than a wandering life.

—Homer, c. 750 BC

For most of us, nighttime dreaming brings us closer to our identities and our power than any activity in the waking world.

—Walter Mosley, 2000

I’d like to be a machine, wouldn’t you?

—Andy Warhol, 1963

Nature has planted in our minds an insatiable desire to seek the truth.

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 45 BC

Soldiers in peace are like chimneys in summer.

—William Cecil, Lord Burghley, c. 1555

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

—Oscar Wilde, 1891

We must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament and embrace it with passion if we want to be happy.

—Cyril Connolly, 1944

The past grows gradually around one, like a placenta for dying.

—John Berger, 1984

An American will build a house in which to pass his old age and sell it before the roof is on.

—Alexis de Tocqueville, 1840