I have yet, I believe, some years in store, for I have a good state of health and a happy mind, and I take care of both by nourishing the first with temperance and the latter with abundance. This, I believe, you will allow to be the true philosophy of life.
—Thomas Paine, 1803
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Quotes
Man is merely a more perfect animal than the rest. He reasons better.
—Napoleon Bonaparte, 1816Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth but not its twin.
—Barbara Kingsolver, 1990Every man has a lurking wish to appear considerable in his native place.
—Samuel Johnson, 1771The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do.
—B.F. Skinner, 1969There be beasts that, at a year old, observe more, and pursue that which is for their good more prudently, than a child can do at ten.
—Thomas Hobbes, 1651An ugly sight, a man who’s afraid.
—Jean Anouilh, 1944To think ill of mankind, and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.
—William Hazlitt, 1823The older one grows, the more one likes indecency.
—Virginia Woolf, 1921Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
If I lose at play, I blaspheme, and if my fellow loses, he blasphemes. So that God is always sure to be the loser.
—John Donne, 1623A true German can’t stand the French, / Yet willingly he drinks their wines.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1832The fear of war is worse than war itself.
—Seneca, c. 50