One of the saddest things is that the only thing that a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You can’t eat eight hours a day, nor drink for eight hours a day, nor make love for eight hours.
—William Faulkner, 1958
Archive
Quotes
Traveling is like gambling: it is ever connected with winning and losing, and generally where least expected we receive more or less than we hoped for.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1797Democracy, like the human organism, carries within it the seed of its own destruction.
—Veronica Wedgwood, 1946Hang work! I wish that all the year were holiday; I am sure that Indolence—indefeasible Indolence—is the true state of man.
—Charles Lamb, 1805Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends.
—Alexander Pope, 1709Never make a defense or apology before you be accused.
—Charles I, 1636The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.
—G.K. Chesterton, 1919All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.
—Al Smith, 1933The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
—H.L. Mencken, 1921In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1830The young man must store up, the old man must use.
—Seneca the Younger, c. 63Take back your golden fiddles, and we’ll beat to open sea.
—Rudyard Kipling, 1892The fox knows lots of tricks, the hedgehog only one—but it’s a winner.
—Archilochus, c. 650 BC