I find the pain of a little censure, even when it is unfounded, is more acute than the pleasure of much praise.
—Thomas Jefferson, 1789
Archive
Quotes
One need merely visit the marketplace and the graveyard to determine whether a city is in both physical and metaphysical order.
—Ernst Jünger, 1977There is nothing sillier than a silly laugh.
—Catullus, c. 60 BCEducation is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.
—Joseph Stalin, 1934Exile lacks the grandeur, the majesty, of expatriation.
—Bharati Mukherjee, 1999One is never as unhappy as one thinks, nor as happy as one hopes.
—La Rochefoucauld, 1664Everyone who is sick is someone else’s patient zero.
—Leslie Jamison, 2020If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them.
—Francis Bacon, 1625Rivalry adds so much to the charms of one’s conquests.
—Louisa May Alcott, 1866I don’t believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there’s one thing that’s dangerous for an artist, it’s precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and all the rest of it.
—Federico Fellini, c. 1950What delight can there be, and not rather displeasure, in hearing the barking and howling of dogs? Or what greater pleasure is there to be felt when a dog followeth a hare than when a dog followeth a dog?
—Thomas More, 1516Revolutionaries are greater sticklers for formality than conservatives.
—Italo Calvino, 1957An irreligious man is not one who denies the gods of the majority, but one who applies to the gods the opinions of the majority. For what most men say about the gods are not ideas derived from sensation, but false opinions, according to which the greatest evils come to the wicked, and the greatest blessings come to the good from the gods.
—Epicurus, c. 250 BC