O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes.
—William Shakespeare, c. 1599
Archive
Quotes
Who hears the fishes when they cry?
—Henry David Thoreau, 1849People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.
—Robert Byrd, 2005I do not mean to call an elephant a vulgar animal, but if you think about him carefully, you will find that his nonvulgarity consists in such gentleness as is possible to elephantine nature—not in his insensitive hide, nor in his clumsy foot, but in the way he will lift his foot if a child lies in his way; and in his sensitive trunk, and still more sensitive mind, and capability of pique on points of honor.
—John Ruskin, 1860We do not suffer by accident.
—Jane Austen, 1813Man is a troublesome animal and therefore is not very manageable.
—Plato, c. 349 BCIndustrialism is the religion with “the machine” as the god going to answer all the prayers. Communism and capitalism were just competing sects.
—Dora Russell, 1983There is no blindness more insidious, more fatal, than this race for profit.
—Helen Keller, 1928One of the saddest things is that the only thing that a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You can’t eat eight hours a day, nor drink for eight hours a day, nor make love for eight hours.
—William Faulkner, 1958A crowded police court docket is the surest sign that trade is brisk and money plenty.
—Mark Twain, 1872Children are all foreigners. We treat them as such.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1839The true mission of American sports is to prepare young men for war.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower, c. 1952Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1755