Many a man who thinks to found a home discovers that he has merely opened a tavern for his friends.
—Norman Douglas, 1917
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Quotes
Men, my dear, are very queer animals—a mixture of horse nervousness, ass stubbornness, and camel malice.
—T. H. Huxley, 1895Go to the ant, you lazybones; consider its ways, and be wise.
—Book of Proverbs, c. 350 BCI never know quite when I’m not writing. Sometimes my wife comes up to me at a party and says, Dammit, Thurber, stop writing. She usually catches me in the middle of a paragraph. Or my daughter will look up from the dinner table and ask, Is he sick? No, my wife says, he’s writing something.
—James Thurber, 1955Alas! We are ridiculous animals.
—Horace Walpole, 1777As natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection.
—Charles Darwin, 1859Is there no way out of the mind?
—Sylvia Plath, 1962Punishment is a sort of medicine.
—Aristotle, c. 340 BCI curse the night, yet doth from day me hide.
—William Drummond, 1616’Tis not a ridiculous devotion to say a prayer before a game at tables?
—Thomas Browne, 1642Oligopoly, plutocracy, kleptocracy: All things that are good for a shareholder.
—James J. Cramer, 2006There is a city in which you find everything you desire—handsome people, pleasures, ornaments of every kind—all that the natural person craves. However, you cannot find a single wise person there.
—Rumi, c. 1250Misfortune, n. The kind of fortune that never misses.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1906