Sloth (like Rust) consumes faster than Labor wears:
the used Key is always bright.Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher, aphorist
Poor Richard’s Almanack (Jul 1744)
Ye poor posterity, think not that ye are the first. Other fools before ye have seen the sun rise and set, and the moon change her shape and her hour. As they were so ye are; and yet not so great; for the pyramids my people built stand to this day; whilst the dustheaps on which ye slave, and which ye call empires, scatter in the wind even as ye pile your dead sons’ bodies on them to make yet more dust.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
Caesar and Cleopatra
For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965) British statesman and author
Speech, House of Commons (23 Jan 1948)
(Source)
Sometimes given: "History will bear me out, particularly as I shall write that history myself." More discussion here: Churchillisms: "Leave the Past to History" (which He will Write).
Experience: The name every one gives to his mistakes.
Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915) American writer, businessman, philosopher
The Roycroft Dictionary (1914)
(Source)
Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait.
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) Russian novelist and moral philosopher
War and Peace, Book 10, ch. 16 (1865-1869)
Monty Python’s usual schoolboy humour is here let loose on a period of history appropriately familiar to every schoolboy in the West, and a faith which could be shaken by such good-humoured ribaldry would be a very precarious faith indeed.
(Other Authors and Sources)
The British Board Of Film Censors, Report on Life of Brian (1979)
The great lesson to draw from revolutions is not that they devour humanity but rather that tyranny never fails to generate them.
Pierre Trudeau (1919–2000) Canadian politician
“When the People Are in Power” (1958)
The happiest excitement in life is to be convinced that one is fighting for all one is worth on behalf of some clearly seen and deeply felt good, and against some greatly scorned evil.
Ruth Benedict (1887-1947) American anthropologist
Journal, undated (1915-1934)
We have discovered that what a year ago seemed to be a neglected house is essentially a ruin. This is not a pleasant fact, and it is not surprising that all of us are rather annoyed and disappointed about it.
Václav Havel (1936-2011) Czech playwright, essayist, dissident, politician
New Year’s Address to the Nation, Prague (1 Jan 1991)
Commerce is naturally adverse to all the violent passions; it loves to temporize, takes delight in compromise, and studiously avoids irritation. It is patient, insinuating, flexible, and never has recourse to extreme measures until obliged by the most absolute necessity. Commerce renders men independent of each other, gives them a lofty notion of their personal importance, leads them to seek to conduct their own affairs, and teaches how to conduct them well; it therefore prepares men for freedom, but preserves them from revolutions.
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) French writer, diplomat, politician
Democracy in America, Vol. 2, Book 3, ch. 21 (1840)
Alt. trans.: "Trade is the natural enemy of all violent passions. Trade loves moderation, delights in compromise, and is most careful to avoid anger. It is patient, supple, and insinuating, only resorting to extreme measures in cases of absolute necessity. Trade makes men independent of one another and gives them a high idea of their personal importance: it leads them to want to manage their own affairs and teaches them to succeed therein. Hence it makes them inclined to liberty but disinclined to revolution."
From the perspective of society the highest moral ideal is justice. From the perspective of the individual the highest ideal is unselfishness. Society must strive for justice even if it is forced to use means, such as self-assertion, resistance, coercion and perhaps resentment, which cannot gain the moral sanction of the most sensitive moral spirit.
Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) American theologian and clergyman
“Pacifism Against the Wall,” The American Scholar (Spring 1936)
Full text.
Ever’ once in a while we meet a feller that’s too proud t’ beg, an’ too honest t’ steal, an’ too lazy t’ work.
Frank McKinney "Kin" Hubbard (1868-1930) American caricaturist and humorist
Abe Martin’s Almanack
Full text.
Judgment is to be made of actions according to the times in which they were performed.
Plutarch (AD 46-127) Greek historian, biographer, essayist [Mestrius Plutarchos]
Parallel Lives, “Policola and Colon Compared” [Dryden Ed. (1693)]
If you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965) British statesman and author
(Spurious)
This hasn't been found in Churchill's writings, and is generally believed by researchers (and the Churchill Centre) to be spurious. It's also misaligned with the ideological cycle of Churchill's own career.
See Clemenceau for more discussion about this general quotation form.
But he was at home there, he might speake his will,
Every cocke is proud on his owne dunghill.John Heywood (1497?-1580?) English playwright and epigrammist
Proverbes, Part 1, ch. 11 (1546)
(Source)
Laff every good chance ya kan git, but don’t laff unless yu feal like it, for there ain’t nothing in this world more harty than a good honest laff, nor nothing more hoollow than a hartless one.
[Laugh every good chance you can get, but don’t laugh unless you feel like it, for there ain’t nothing in this world more hearty than a good, honest laugh, nor nothing more hollow than a heartless one.]
Josh Billings (1818-1885) American humorist, aphorist [pseud. of Henry Wheeler Shaw]
Everybody’s Friend, Or; Josh Billing’s Encyclopedia and Proverbial Philosophy of Wit and Humor, “Laffing” (1874)
Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
Comment (18 Apr 1775)
In James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)
Gil-galad was an Elven-king.
Of him the harpers sadly sing:
the last whose realm was fair and free
between the Mountains and the Sea.His sword was long, his lance was keen,
his shining helm afar was seen;
the countless stars of heaven’s field
were mirrored in his silver shield.But long ago he rode away
and where he dwelleth none can say;
for into darkness fell his star
in Mordor where the shadows are.J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) English writer, fabulist, philologist, academic [John Ronald Reuel Tolkien]
The Lord of the Rings, Vol. 1: The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 1, ch. 11 “A Knife in the Dark” [Sam] (1954)
(Source)
Sam says he was taught it by Bilbo, who claimed to have written it. Aragorn corrects him, saying it is part of a lay called "The Fall of Gil-galad," though Bilbo appears to have translated it from the Elvish.
It almost seems that nobody can hate America as much as native Americans. America needs new immigrants to love and cherish it.
Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
“Thoughts of Eric Hoffer,” New York Times Magazine (25 Apr 1971)
Maybe we should always show pictures. Bin Laden, pictures of our wounded service people, pictures of maimed innocent civilians. We can only make decisions about war if we see what war actually is — and not as a video game where bodies quickly disappear, leaving behind a shiny gold coin.
Jon Stewart (b. 1962) American satirist, comedian, and television host. [b. Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz]
The Daily Show (2011-05-04)
A musicologist is a man who can read music but can’t hear it.
Sir Thomas Beecham (1879-1961) British conductor
(Attributed)
In H. Proctor-Gregg, Beecham Remembered (1976)
He who is only just is cruel; who
Upon the earth would live were all judged justly?George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) English poet
Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice, Act 5, sc. 1 [Angiolina] (1821)
(Source)
Struggling to be brief
I become obscure.[Brevis esse laboro,
obscurus fio.]Horace (65-8 BC) Roman poet and satirist [Quintus Horacius Flaccus]
Ars Poetica, l. 25 (c. 18 BC)
Alt. trans.: "Aiming at brevity, I become obscure."
My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel, if there had never been a priest. The artificial structures they have built on the purest of all moral systems, for the purpose of deriving from it pence and power, revolts those who think for themselves, and who read in that system only what is really there.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Letter to Mrs. Samuel H. Smith [Margaret Bayard Smith] (6 Aug 1816)
Vulgarity in a king flatters the majority of the nation.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
Man and Superman, “Maxims for Revolutionists: Royalty” (1903)
Wouldn’t it be great if we all grew up to be what we wanted to be? The world would be full of nurses, firemen, and ballerinas.
Lily Tomlin (b. 1939) American comedian and actress
Saturday Night Live (22 Nov 1975)
History is not, of course, a cookbook, offering pretested recipes. It teaches by analogy, not by maxims.
Henry Kissinger (b. 1923) German-American diplomat
White House Years, ch. 3 (1979)
Genius is often only the power of making continuous efforts. The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it — so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it. How many a man has thrown up his hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience, would have achieved success. As the tide goes clear out, so it comes clear in. In business sometimes prospects may seem darkest when really they are on the turn. A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success. There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose.
Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915) American writer, businessman, philosopher
Electrical Review (c. 1895)
Original source not found, but as such in Evelyn Briggs Baldwin, The Search for the North Pole (1896). Later published in various works by Hubbard, including FRA Magazine : A Journal of Affirmation (1915), and An American Bible (1918) (ed. Alice Hubbard).
You will die — and it will all be over. You will die and find out everything — or cease asking.
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) Russian novelist and moral philosopher
War and Peace, Book 5, ch. 1 (1865-1869)
What no human soul desires there is no need to prohibit; it is automatically excluded. The very emphasis of the commandment, Thou shalt not kill, makes it certain that we spring from an endless ancestry of murderers, with whom the lust for killing was in the blood, as possibly it is to this day with ourselves.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Austrian psychoanalyst and neurologist
“Reflections upon War and Death” (2) (1915) [tr. Mayne (1963)]
Sail, quoth the King; hold, saith the Wind.
Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician, preacher, aphorist, writer
Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs, #4064 (1732)
(Source)
Human happiness konsists in having what yu want, and wanting what yu hav.
[Human happiness consists in having what you want, and wanting what you have.]
Josh Billings (1818-1885) American humorist, aphorist [pseud. of Henry Wheeler Shaw]
Everybody’s Friend, Or; Josh Billing’s Encyclopedia and Proverbial Philosophy of Wit and Humor, ch. 131 “Affurisms: Plum Pits (1)” (1874)
(Source)
It would be very unreasonable to understand the sad legacy of the last forty years as something alien, which some distant relative bequeathed to us. On the contrary, we have to accept this legacy as a sin we committed against ourselves. If we accept it as such, we will understand that it is up to us all, and up to us alone to do something about it. We cannot blame the previous rulers for everything, not only because it would be untrue, but also because it would blunt the duty that each of us faces today: namely, the obligation to act independently, freely, reasonably and quickly.
Václav Havel (1936-2011) Czech playwright, essayist, dissident, politician
New Year’s Address to the Nation, Prague (1 Jan 1990)
In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own.
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) French writer, diplomat, politician
Democracy in America, Vol. 2, Book 1, ch. 2 (1840)
Fall seven times, stand up eight.
(Other Authors and Sources)
Japanese proverb
Special mercy arouses more gratitude than universal mercy.
Richard Baxter (1615-1691) English Puritan clergyman and writer
The Saints’ Everlasting Rest, “The Splendor of the Saints’ Rest” (1650)
Distrust your judgment the moment you can discern the shadow of a personal motive in it.
[Mißtraue deinem Urteil, sobald du darin den Schatten eines persönlichen Motivs entdecken kannst.]
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830-1916) Austrian writer
Aphorisms [Aphorismen], No. 548 (1880) [tr. Scrase/Mieder (1994)]
(Source)
He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.
It hurteth not the toung to give faire words.
John Heywood (1497?-1580?) English playwright and epigrammist
Proverbes, Part 1, ch. 9 (1546)
(Source)
It’s not whether God is on our side or whether we’re doing God’s will, it’s being so narcissistic as to think that God is telling you what to do.
Lily Tomlin (b. 1939) American comedian and actress
Interview with Alonso Duralde, “Thoroughly Modern Lily” The Advocate (15 Mar 2005)
Let us put aside resolutely that great fright, tenderly and without malice, daring to be wrong in something important rather than right in some meticulous banality, fearing no evil while the mind is free to search, imagine, and conclude, inviting our countrymen to try other instruments than coercion and suppression in the effort to meet destiny with triumph, genially suspecting that no creed yet calendared in the annals of politics mirrors the doomful possibilities of infinity.
Charles Beard (1874-1948) American historian
Address, American Political Science Assoc., St. Louis, Missouri (29 Dec 1926)
Reprinted as "Time, Technology, and the Creative Spirit in Political Science," The American Political Science Review, (February 1927)
That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don’t know nothing about it.
Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, ch. 1 (1884)
But either in his dreams or out of them, he could not tell which, Frodo heard a sweet singing running in his mind: a song that seemed to come like a pale light behind a grey rain-curtain, and growing stronger to turn the veil all to silver and glass, until at last it was rolled back, and a far green country opened before him under a swift sunrise.
J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) English writer, fabulist, philologist, academic [John Ronald Reuel Tolkien]
The Lord of the Rings, Vol. 1: The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 1, ch. 8 “Fog on the Barrow-Downs” (1954)
(Source)
How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would spoil our appetite and make the world seem empty.
Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
“Thoughts of Eric Hoffer,” New York Times Magazine (1971-04-25)
(Source)
Vengeance is counterproductive, always. Not to mention the fact it gets your soul all sticky.
Spider Robinson (b. 1948) American-Canadian author
Callahan’s Con, ch. 2 [Lady Sally] (2003)
My evangelistic brethren confuse an objection to compulsion with an objection to religion. It is possible to hold a faith with enough confidence that what should be rendered to God does not need to be decided and collected by Caesar.
Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954) US Supreme Court Justice (1941-54), lawyer, jurist, politician
Zorach v. Clauson, 343 US 306, 324-325 (1952) [dissent]
We can remember minutely and precisely only the things which never really happened to us.
Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
“Thoughts of Eric Hoffer,” The New York Times Magazine (25 Apr 1971)
It is a curious fact (or it isn’t) that of all the illusions that beset mankind none is quite so curious as that tendency to suppose that we are mentally and morally superior to those who differ from us in opinion.
Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915) American writer, businessman, philosopher
The Selected Writings of Elbert Hubbard [ed. Ben Hubbard] (1922)
Full text.
He who feared that he would not succeed sat still.
[Sedit qui timuit ne non succederet.]
Horace (65-8 BC) Roman poet and satirist [Quintus Horacius Flaccus]
Epistles, Book 1, Epistle 17, l. 37 (c. 20 BC and 14 BC)
But the whole history of these books [the Bible] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been plaid with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Letter to John Adams (24 Jan 1814)
(Source)
Of the various forms of government which have prevailed in the world, an hereditary monarchy seems to present the fairest scope for ridicule.
Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) English historian
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. 7 (1776-88)
There are more Fools than Knaves in the World,
Else the Knaves would not have enough to live upon.Samuel Butler (1835-1902) English novelist, satirist, scholar
Prose Observations, “Sundry Thoughts”
(Source)
The most persistent sound which reverberates through history is the beating of war drums.
Alfred Koestler (1905-1983) Hungarian-English novelist, essayist
Janus: A Summing Up, Prologue (1978)
Piety is the tinfoil of pretense.
Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915) American writer, businessman, philosopher
The Philistine (Sep 1908)
Full text.
Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here.
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) Russian novelist and moral philosopher
War and Peace, Book 4, ch. 11 (1865-1869)