For what do we live but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn?
—Jane Austen, 1813
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Quotes
Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.
—Gore Vidal, 1973One has to spend so many years in learning how to be happy.
—George Eliot, 1844What one knows is, in youth, of little moment; they know enough who know how to learn.
—Henry Adams, 1907He that raises a large family, does indeed, while he lives to observe them, stand…a broader mark for sorrow; but then he stands a broader mark for pleasure too.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1786And your very flesh shall be a great poem.
—Walt Whitman, 1855Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.
—G.K. Chesterton, 1928If there is a technological advance without a social advance, there is, almost automatically, an increase in human misery.
—Michael Harrington, 1962Our allotted time is the passing of a shadow.
—Book of Wisdom, c. 100 BCFrom hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.
—Herman Melville, 1851Let him who desires peace prepare for war.
—Vegetius, c. 385Resorting to the law to resolve a dispute is a declaration of spiritual bankruptcy.
—Quentin Crisp, 1984We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words.
—Anna Sewell, 1877