Quotes · Skopia

58 quotes

SortEditorial Year Length

Statement type·Definition✕clear

Religious literature

By religion, then, I understand a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life.

James George Frazer

1922

★ 0.8

Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination.

Ernest Hemingway

1942

★ 1.2

Religious literature

Law: an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community.

St. Thomas Aquinas

Summa Theologicae · 1273

★ 1.4

Personal journal · Travel writing

My definition of Man is, "a Cooking Animal." The beasts have memory, judgment, and all the faculties and passions of our mind, in a certain degree; but no beast is a cook... Man alone can dress a good dish; and every man whatever is more or less a cook, in seasoning what he himself eats.

1773

★ 1.8

Did you ever hear my definition of marriage? It is, that it resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they can not be separated; often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing any one who comes between them.

1845

★ 1.8

Conversation... Is the art of never appearing a bore, of knowing how to say everything interestingly, to entertain with no matter what, to be charming with nothing at all.

Guy de Maupassant

1876

★ 1.8

Death is like a fisherman, who, having caught a fish in his net, leaves it in the water for a time; the fish continues to swim about, but all the while the net is round it, and the fisherman will snatch it out in his own good time.

1860

★ 1.9

Diplomacy is to do and say The nastiest thing in the nicest way.

1927

★ 1.9

We hear war called murder. It is not: it is suicide.

Ramsay MacDonald

1930

★ 1.9

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

1944

★ 1.9

Tragedy plus time equals comedy.

1957

★ 1.9

Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real. Love, and so art and morals, is the discovery of reality.

1959

★ 1.9

A pistol let off at the ear, not a feather to tickle the intellect.

1833

★ 1.9

Camp is a vision of the world in terms of style-but a particular kind of style. It is the love of the exaggerated, the "off," of things-being-what-they-are-not... The ultimate Camp statement: it's good because it's awful.

Notes on Camp · 1964

★ 1.9

Philosophical literature

History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illumines reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life, and brings us tidings of antiquity.

On Oratory · 55 BC

★ 2.0

Scripture · Religious literature

True piety is this: to believe in God, and the Last Day, the angels, the Book, and the Prophets, to give of one's substance, however cherished, to kinsmen, and orphans, the needy, the traveler, beggars, and to ransom the slave, to perform the prayer, to pay the alms.

The Quran, The Koran, 2:177 · 632

★ 2.0

Grief is a species of idleness.

1773

★ 2.0

Essay · Magazine

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

Fortnightly Review · 1891

★ 2.0

Crime is naught but misdirected energy.

1910

★ 2.0

Political literature

Imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism.

Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism · 1917

★ 2.0

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