He that would eat the nut must crack the shell.
—Plautus, c. 200 BC
Archive
Quotes
All God’s children are not beautiful. Most of God’s children are, in fact, barely presentable.
—Fran Lebowitz, 1978Among famous traitors of history, one might mention the weather.
—Ilka Chase, 1969Worldly fame is but a breath of wind that blows now this way, now that, and changes names as it changes in direction.
—Dante Alighieri, c. 1315Is this dying? Is this all? Is this all that I feared when I prayed against a hard death? Oh, I can bear this! I can bear it!
—Cotton Mather, 1728We are to go to law never to revenge, but only to repair.
—Samuel Pepys, 1661The mere existence of nuclear weapons by the thousands is an incontrovertible sign of human insanity.
—Isaac Asimov, 1988A world is sooner destroyed than made.
—Thomas Burnet, 1684God is a complex of ideas formed by the tribe, the nation, and humanity, which awake and organize social feelings and aim to link the individual to society and to bridle the zoological individualism.
—Maxim Gorky, 1913Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny, they have only shifted it to another shoulder.
—George Bernard Shaw, 1903Men, my dear, are very queer animals—a mixture of horse nervousness, ass stubbornness, and camel malice.
—T. H. Huxley, 1895He who would have clear water should go to the fountainhead.
—Italian proverbBright youth passes as quickly as thought.
—Theognis, c. 550 BC