He who has nothing has no friends.
—Greek proverb
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Quotes
A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.
—Martin Luther King Jr., c. 1967I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it—yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don’t give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by.
—Orson Welles, 1953It is easy to distinguish between the joking that reflects good breeding and that which is coarse—the one, if aired at an apposite moment of mental relaxation, is becoming in the most serious of men, whereas the other is unworthy of any free person, if the content is indecent or the expression obscene.
—Cicero, c. 44 BCLet me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world: it gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel. The picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.
—Susan B. Anthony, 1896The more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation.
—Plato, c. 375 BCIn meeting again after a separation, acquaintances ask after our outward life, friends after our inner life.
—Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, 1880Freedom of the press is only guaranteed to those who own one.
—A.J. Liebling, 1960Fashion, n. A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1911Years are nothing to me—they should be nothing to you. Who asked you to count them or to consider them? In the world of wild nature, time is measured by seasons only—the bird does not know how old it is—the rose tree does not count its birthdays!
—Marie Corelli, 1911I have given up considering happiness as relevant.
—Edward Gorey, 1974In settling an island, the first building erected by a Spaniard will be a church, by a Frenchman a fort, by a Dutchman a warehouse, and by an Englishman an alehouse.
—Francis Grose, 1787Seek not water, only show you are thirsty, / That water may spring up all around you.
—Rumi, c. 1260