No time to marry, no time to settle down, I’m a young woman, and ain’t done runnin’ round.
—Bessie Smith, 1926
Archive
Quotes
The period of a [Persian] boy’s education is between the ages of five and twenty, and he is taught three things only: to ride, to use the bow, and to speak the truth.
—Herodotus, c. 440 BCAll successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. The violence of revolutions is the violence of men who charge into a vacuum.
—John Kenneth Galbraith, 1977Nothing is more narrow-minded than chauvinism or racial hatred. To me all men are equal; there are flatheads everywhere and I despise them all equally.
—Karl Kraus, 1909I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.
—Thomas Hobbes, 1679I shall embrace my rival—until I suffocate him.
—Jean Racine, 1669Living is an ailment that is relieved every sixteen hours by sleep. A palliative. Death is the cure.
—Sébastien-Roch Nicolas Chamfort, c. 1790Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.
We should always presume the disease to be curable until its own nature proves it otherwise.
—Peter Mere Latham, c. 1845What one knows is, in youth, of little moment; they know enough who know how to learn.
—Henry Adams, 1907Casting lots causes contentions to cease, and keeps the mighty apart.
—Book of Proverbs, c. 350 BCIs 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, 1728One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.
—E.B. White, 1958