Archive

Quotes

If you would help another man, you must do so in minute particulars.

—William Blake, 1804

In a court of fowls, the cockroach never wins its case.

—Rwandan proverb

Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.

—William Shakespeare, 1603

The world is made of the very stuff of the body.

—Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 1961

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844

I would much rather have men ask why I have no statue than why I have one.

—Cato the Elder, c. 184 BC

If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper that did his job well.

—Martin Luther King Jr., 1954

It is better to live unknown to the law.

—Irish proverb

Spit not in the well; you may have to drink its water.

—French proverb

Machines seem to sense that I am afraid of them. It makes them hostile.

—Sharyn McCrumb, 1990

The young man must store up, the old man must use.

—Seneca the Younger, c. 63

To be sick is to enjoy monarchal prerogatives.

—Charles Lamb, 1833

The world is dying of machinery; that is the great disease, that is the plague that will sweep away and destroy civilization; man will have to rise against it sooner or later.

—George Moore, 1888