The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty, and death of public opinion.
—Samuel Butler, c. 1902
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Quotes
Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave.
—Thomas Browne, 1658Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.
—Noël Coward, 1930What is the hardest task in the world? To think.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1841Business? Why, it’s very simple; business is other people’s money.
—Alexandre Dumas, 1857Darkness endows the small and ordinary ones among mankind with poetical power.
—Thomas Hardy, 1874No one’s serious at seventeen.
—Arthur Rimbaud, 1870As to the sea itself, love it you cannot. Why should you? I will never believe again the sea was ever loved by anyone whose life was married to it. It is the creation of omnipotence, which is not of humankind and understandable, and so the springs of its behavior are hidden.
—H.M. Tomlinson, 1912The winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.
—Edward Gibbon, 1788Words pay no debts.
—William Shakespeare, 1601This is a fault common to all singers, that among their friends they will never sing when they are asked; unasked, they will never desist.
—Horace, c. 35 BCMachines do not run in order to enable men to live, but we resign ourselves to feeding men in order that they may serve the machines.
—Simone Weil, 1934A man is not idle, because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labor and there is an invisible labor.
—Victor Hugo, 1862