Revolutions are not made by men in spectacles.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1871
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Quotes
Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.
—Gore Vidal, 1973Don’t talk to me about naval tradition. It’s nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash.
—Winston Churchill, 1939A woman should never be seen eating or drinking unless it be lobster salad and champagne, the only truly feminine and becoming viands.
—Lord Byron, 1812To call a fashion wearable is the kiss of death. No new fashion worth its salt is ever wearable.
—Eugenia Sheppard, 1960Language is the armory of the human mind and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1817The peasants alone are revolutionary, for they have nothing to lose and everything to gain. The starving peasant, outside the class system, is the first among the exploited to discover that only violence pays. For him there is no compromise, no possible coming to terms.
—Frantz Fanon, 1961For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.
—Book of Ecclesiastes, c. 250 BCSeven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.
—Jane Austen, 1811The nature of God is a circle, of which the center is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere.
—Empedocles, c. 450 BCIn the country gossip is a pastime; in the city it is a warfare.
—W.M.L. Jay, 1870All God’s children are not beautiful. Most of God’s children are, in fact, barely presentable.
—Fran Lebowitz, 1978No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called games.
—W.H. Auden, 1962