Pride and excess bring disaster for man.
—Xunzi, 250 BC
Archive
Quotes
Health in all lands is among the indispensable guarantees of human progress.
—Helen Keller, 1936Rivalry is the whetstone of talent.
—Roman proverbIt is not my design to drink or sleep; my design is to make what haste I can to be gone.
—Oliver Cromwell, 1658Not a change for the better in our human housekeeping has ever taken place that wise and good men have not opposed it—have not prophesied that the world would wake up to find its throat cut in consequence.
—James Russell Lowell, 1884I am ill every time it blows hard, and nothing but my enthusiastic love for the profession keeps me one hour at sea.
—Admiral Horatio Nelson, 1804Hate must make a man productive. Otherwise one might as well love.
—Karl Kraus, 1912The history of the land has been written very largely in water.
—John Hodgdon Bradley Jr., 1935I have often said that if I wish to name-drop, I have only to list my ex-friends.
—Norman Podhoretz, 1999The charm, one might say the genius, of memory is that it is choosy, chancy, and temperamental: it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chawing a hunk of melon in the dust.
—Elizabeth Bowen, 1955Why is a ship under sail more poetical than a hog in a high wind? The hog is all nature, the ship is all art.
—Lord Byron, 1821Music today is nothing more than the art of performing difficult pieces.
—Voltaire, 1759For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
—Richard Feynman, 1986