Archive

Quotes

I hate the whole race. There is no believing a word they say—your professional poets, I mean—there never existed a more worthless set than Byron and his friends for example.

—Duke of Wellington, c. 1810

Is it only the mouth and belly which are injured by hunger and thirst? Men’s minds are also injured by them.

—Mencius, 300 BC

Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave.

—Thomas Browne, 1658

Money is mourned with deeper sorrow than friends or kindred.

—Juvenal, 128

God walks among the pots and pans.

—Saint Teresa of Ávila, c. 1582

As bad a dresser as I am, anything beats being judged by my character.

—David Sedaris, 1997

He laughs best who laughs last.

—French proverb

So many men, so many opinions.

—Terence, 161 BC

Everything remembered is dear, endearing, touching, precious. At least the past is safe—though we didn’t know it at the time.

—Susan Sontag, 1973

The first requisite to happiness is that a man be born in a famous city.

—Euripides, c. 415 BC

There is no crime without precedent. 

—Seneca the Younger, c. 60

Nationalism is an infantile disease, the measles of mankind.

—Albert Einstein, 1929

Any man could, if he were so inclined, be the sculptor of his own brain.

—Santiago Ramón y Cajal, 1897