To endeavor to forget anyone is a certain way of thinking of nothing else.
—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688
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Quotes
The sea receives us in a proper way only when we are without clothes.
—Pliny the Elder, 77What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul.
—Joseph Addison, 1711“Work” does not exist in a nonliterate world. The primitive hunter or fisherman did no work, any more than does the poet, painter, or thinker of today. Where the whole man is involved there is no work.
—Marshall McLuhan, 1964Let us make our own mistakes, but let us take comfort in the knowledge that they are our own mistakes.
—Tom Mboya, 1958If we pretend to respect the artist at all, we must allow him his freedom of choice, in the face, in particular cases, of innumerable presumptions that the choice will not fructify. Art derives a considerable part of its beneficial exercise from flying in the face of presumptions.
—Henry James, 1884Nature is immovable.
—Euripides, c. 415 BCA private sin is not so prejudicial in this world as a public indecency.
—Miguel de Cervantes, 1615The true mission of American sports is to prepare young men for war.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower, c. 1952An American will build a house in which to pass his old age and sell it before the roof is on.
—Alexis de Tocqueville, 1840To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the need for thought.
—Henri Poincaré, 1903Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made—through disobedience and through rebellion.
—Oscar Wilde, 1891The life of the dead consists in the recollection cherished of them by the living.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 43 BC