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Quotes

Darkness endows the small and ordinary ones among mankind with poetical power.

—Thomas Hardy, 1874

The state dictates and coerces; religion teaches and persuades. The state enacts laws; religion gives commandments. The state is armed with physical force and makes use of it if need be; the force of religion is love and benevolence.

—Moses Mendelssohn, 1783

Some of us would be greatly astonished to learn the reasons why others respect us.

—Marquis de Vauvenargues, 1746

Laughter almost ever cometh of things most disproportioned to ourselves and nature. Laughter hath only a scornful tickling.

—Philip Sidney, 1582

Travelers, poets, and liars are three words all of one significance.

—Richard Brathwaite, 1631

He 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, 1786

I am a living symbol of the white man’s fear.

—Winnie Mandela, 1985

The beginning of health lies in knowing the disease.

—Miguel de Cervantes, 1615

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

—Samuel Johnson, 1780

Everyone knows about everybody in Hollywood—who sleeps with whom, who doesn’t sleep, who does it standing on his head or in the dentist’s chair.

—Rock Hudson, 1982

He alone who owns the youth gains the future.

—Adolf Hitler, 1935

The period of a [Persian] boy’s education is between the ages of five and twenty, and he is taught three things only: to ride, to use the bow, and to speak the truth.

—Herodotus, c. 440 BC

It was lonesome, the leaving.

—Wetatonmi, c. 1877