"I never failed to convince an audience that the best thing they could do was to go away."

Thomas Love Peacock Literature See all quotes by Thomas Love Peacock →

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“There are two reasons for drinking: one is, when you are thirsty, to cure it; the other, when you are not thirsty, to prevent it. The first is obvious, mechanical, and plebeian; the second is most refined, abstract, prospicient, and canonical.”

“I almost think it is the ultimate destiny of science to exterminate the human race.”

“Marriage may often be a stormy lake, but celibacy is almost always a muddy horsepond.”

“Respectable means rich, and decent means poor. I should die if I heard my family called decent.”

“When Scythrop grew up, he was sent, as usual, to a public school, where a little learning was painfully beaten into him, and from thence to the university, where it was carefully taken out of him.”

“The waste of plenty is the resource of scarcity.”

Resonant Thoughts

"For some reason, nobody seems to be talking about who we’re up against, and the sixth century barbarism that they actually represent. These people saw people’s heads off. They enslave women, they geni…"

— Frank Miller

Literature1957

#family

"My dear John Russell, Till lately I had strong confidence in the fair intentions of Napoleon towards England, but of late I have begun to feel great distrust and to suspect that his formerly declared …"

— Henry Temple

Politics1739–1802

#life

"Fine thoughts and moral dissertations from men who have not worked and suffered may be read, but they will be forgotten. No religion, no Ethical philosophy is worth anything, if the teacher has not li…"

— George Long (scholar)

Literature1800–1879

#life

"A single assembly will never be a steady guardian of the laws, if Machiavel is right, when he says, Men are never good but through necessity: on the contrary, when good and evil are left to their choi…"

— John Adams

Politics1947

#wisdom