Archive

Quotes

One of the animals which a generous and sociable man would soonest become is a dog. A dog can have a friend; he has affections and character; he can enjoy equally the field and the fireside; he dreams, he caresses, he propitiates; he offends and is pardoned; he stands by you in adversity; he is a good fellow.

—Leigh Hunt, 1834

Dance tunes are always right.

—Dylan Thomas, 1936

A dead enemy always smells good.

—Aulus Vitellius, 69

The Mediterranean has the colors of a mackerel, changeable I mean. You don’t always know if it is green or violet—you can’t even say it’s blue, because the next moment the changing light has taken on a tinge of pink or gray.

—Vincent van Gogh, 1888

There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little.

—Francis Bacon, 1625

Even a paranoid can have enemies.

—Henry Kissinger, 1977

Happiness does not dwell in herds, nor yet in gold.

—Democritus, c. 420 BC

When poets don’t know what to say and have completely given up on the play, just like a finger, they lift the machine and the spectators are satisfied.

—Antiphanes, c. 350 BC

Peace is a natural effect of trade.

—Montesquieu, 1748

Nothing is so easy as to deceive one’s self; for what we wish, that we readily believe.

—Demosthenes, 349 BC

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

—L.P. Hartley, 1953

Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.

—Blaise Pascal, c. 1640

The sadness of the end of a career of an older athlete, with the betrayal of his body, is mirrored in the rest of us. Consciously or not, we know: there, soon, go I.

—Ira Berkow, 1987