Archive

Quotes

In the country gossip is a pastime; in the city it is a warfare.

—W.M.L. Jay, 1870

Do not fear the clatter of wheels, the bumps and slops in corridors. It is only turbulence.

—Romalyn Ante, 2020

Soldiers in peace are like chimneys in summer.

—William Cecil, Lord Burghley, c. 1555

Imagine a number of men in chains, all under sentence of death, some of whom are each day butchered in the sight of the others; those remaining see their own condition in that of their fellows and, looking at each other with grief and despair, await their turn. This is an image of the human condition.

—Blaise Pascal, 1669

There is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship.

—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1943

When we define democracy now, it must still be as a thing hoped for but not seen.

—Pearl S. Buck, 1941

If my books had been any worse I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better I should not have come.

—Raymond Chandler, 1945

Being a star has made it possible for me to get insulted in places where the average Negro could never hope to go and get insulted.

—Sammy Davis Jr., 1965

Go to the ant, you lazybones; consider its ways, and be wise.

—Book of Proverbs, c. 350 BC

Childhood knows what it wants—to leave childhood behind.

—Jean Cocteau, 1947

The most socially subversive institution of our time is the one-parent family.

—Paul Johnson, 1989

What can you conceive more silly and extravagant than to suppose a man racking his brains and studying night and day how to fly?

—William Law, 1728

Anyone who’s never watched somebody die is suffering from a pretty bad case of virginity.

—John Osborne, 1956