To blow and to swallow at the same time is not easy; I cannot at the same time be here and also there.
—Plautus, c. 200 BC
Archive
Quotes
Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
—Gore Vidal, 1981The young man must store up, the old man must use.
—Seneca the Younger, c. 63Secrets are rarely betrayed or discovered according to any program our fear has sketched out.
—George Eliot, 1860I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue.
—Xenocrates, c. 350 BCMy people and I have come to an agreement that satisfies us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please.
—Frederick the Great, c. 1770Happiness does not dwell in herds, nor yet in gold.
—Democritus, c. 420 BCOh, democracy! Whither are you leading us?
—Aristophanes, 414 BCWater its living strength first shows, / When obstacles its course oppose.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1815The brain may be regarded as a kind of parasite of the organism, a pensioner, as it were, who dwells with the body.
—Arthur Schopenhauer, 1851Travelers, poets, and liars are three words all of one significance.
—Richard Brathwaite, 1631A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
—Herman Melville, 1851An unjust law is no law at all.
—Saint Augustine, 395