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Quotes

Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.

—William Blake, c. 1803

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1830

Nothing is more narrow-minded than chauvinism or racial hatred. To me all men are equal; there are flatheads everywhere and I despise them all equally.

—Karl Kraus, 1909

Sanity is madness put to good uses; waking life is a dream controlled.

—George Santayana, 1920

We must confess that at present the rich predominate, but the future will be for the virtuous and ingenious.

—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688

At the start there’s always energy.

—Suzan-Lori Parks, 2006

Revolutions are not about trifles, but they are produced by trifles. 

—Aristotle, c. 350 BC

A self-made man is one who believes in luck and sends his son to Oxford.

—Christina Stead, 1938

I’m afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.

—Aldous Huxley, 1925

Our crime against criminals is that we treat them as villains.

—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1898

It is not a case we are treating; it is a living, palpitating, alas, too often suffering fellow creature.

—John Brown, 1904

Happiness (as the mathematicians might say) lies on a curve, and we approach it only by asymptote.

—Christopher Morley, 1919

Soldiers in peace are like chimneys in summer.

—William Cecil, Lord Burghley, c. 1555