Archive

Quotes

Those who go overseas find a change of climate, not a change of soul.

—Horace, c. 20 BC

It is impossible to please all the world and one’s father.

—Jean de La Fontaine, 1668

Men are generally more pleased with a widespread than with a great reputation.

—Pliny the Younger, c. 110

Industrialism is the religion with “the machine” as the god going to answer all the prayers. Communism and capitalism were just competing sects.

—Dora Russell, 1983

Health care delivery is one of the tragedies still in America.

—Jewel Plummer Cobb, 1989

Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.

—Laozi, c. 500 BC

Night is torment. That is why people go to sleep. To avoid clear sight and torment.

—Dorothy M. Richardson, 1923

Any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich; these are at war with one another.

—Plato, c. 378 BC

Memories are like corks left out of bottles. They swell. They no longer fit.

—Harriet Doerr, 1978

War is fear cloaked in courage. 

—William Westmoreland, 1966

The deed is everything, the glory naught.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1832

I don’t believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear.

—Woody Allen, 1971

Had Cleopatra’s nose been shorter, the whole face of the world would have changed.

—Blaise Pascal, 1658