It is noble to die before doing anything that deserves death.
—Anaxandrides, c. 376
Archive
Quotes
A first-class man subsists on the matter he destroys.
—Saul Bellow, 1989Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
—Ecclesiastes, c. 250 BCIt is impossible to please all the world and one’s father.
—Jean de La Fontaine, 1668It is impossible to translate the poets. Can you translate music?
—Voltaire, c. 1732Exile lacks the grandeur, the majesty, of expatriation.
—Bharati Mukherjee, 1999There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy’s life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.
—Mark Twain, 1876Drink does not drown care but waters it, and makes it grow faster.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1749The mind is led on, step by step, to defeat its own logic.
—Dai Vernon, 1994There is not so contemptible a plant or animal that does not confound the most enlarged understanding.
—John Locke, 1689It is the little causes, long continued, which are considered as bringing about the greatest changes of the earth.
—James Hutton, 1795If both what is before and what is after are in this same “now,” things which happened ten thousand years ago would be simultaneous with what has happened today, and nothing would be before or after anything else.
—Aristotle, c. 330 BCIf I had the use of my body I would throw it out of the window.
—Samuel Beckett, 1951