Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.
—E.M. Forster, 1951Quotes
Wit enables us to act rudely with impunity.
—La Rochefoucauld, 1678People react to fear, not love—they don’t teach that in Sunday school, but it’s true.
—Richard Nixon, 1975To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance.
—Jean Genet, 1949I cannot but bless the memory of Julius Caesar, for the great esteem he expressed for fat men and his aversion to lean ones.
—David Hume, 1751Words pay no debts.
—William Shakespeare, 1601The brain is an unreliable organ, it is monstrously great, monstrously developed. Swollen, like a goiter.
—Aleksandr Blok, c. 1920Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
—Henry Kissinger, 1972In time history must become a fairy tale—it will become again what it was in the beginning.
—Novalis, c. 1798What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul.
—Joseph Addison, 1711Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need—a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.
—Jerome K. Jerome, 1889A true German can’t stand the French, / Yet willingly he drinks their wines.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1832An exile with no home anywhere is a corpse without a grave.
—Publilius Syrus, 50 BC