Over 40,000 Famous Quotes Sorted By Topic and Author

... the patriotic art of lying for one's country.

ECCENTRICITY, n. A method of distinction so cheap that fools employ it to accentuate their incapacity.

Education is that which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.

Education, n.: That which discloses the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.

When you are ill make haste to forgive your enemies, for you may recover.

Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of youth for those of age.

FIDELITY, n. A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.

Acquaintance: a degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor or obscure, and intimate when he is rich or famous.

The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.

BOUNDARY, n. In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of the other.

History: An account, mostly false, of events unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.

Mythology: the body of a primitive people's beliefs, concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deitits and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later.

PRELATE, n. A church officer having a superior degree of holiness and a fat preferment. One of Heaven's aristocracy. A gentleman of God.

HOSPITALITY, n. The virtue which induces us to feed and lodge certain persons who are not in need of food and lodging.

Mad, adj.: Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.

INTIMACY, n. A relation into which fools are providentially drawn for their mutual destruction.

HISTORY, n. An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.

MISERICORDE, n. A dagger which in mediaeval warfare was used by the foot soldier to remind an unhorsed knight that he was mortal.

LAND, n. A part of the earth's surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property subject to private ownership and control is the foundation of modern society . . .

For every man there is something in the vocabulary that would stick to him like a second skin. His enemies have only to find it.