I do desire we may be better strangers.
—William Shakespeare, 1600
Archive
Quotes
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, 1945Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.
—Rudy Giuliani, 1999Rivalry adds so much to the charms of one’s conquests.
—Louisa May Alcott, 1866Tell us your phobias and we will tell you what you are afraid of.
—Robert Benchley, 1935People react to fear, not love—they don’t teach that in Sunday school, but it’s true.
—Richard Nixon, 1975To know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.
—Quentin Crisp, 1968No man ever distinguished himself who could not bear to be laughed at.
—Maria Edgeworth, 1809We must consider that we shall be a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world.
—John Winthrop, 1630Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.
—James Madison, 1794Sex: in America, an obsession; in other parts of the world, a fact.
—Marlene Dietrich, 1962I do not mean to call an elephant a vulgar animal, but if you think about him carefully, you will find that his nonvulgarity consists in such gentleness as is possible to elephantine nature—not in his insensitive hide, nor in his clumsy foot, but in the way he will lift his foot if a child lies in his way; and in his sensitive trunk, and still more sensitive mind, and capability of pique on points of honor.
—John Ruskin, 1860Any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich; these are at war with one another.
—Plato, c. 378 BC