Some of us would be greatly astonished to learn the reasons why others respect us.
—Marquis de Vauvenargues, 1746
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Quotes
Luck, in the great game of war, is undoubtedly lord of all.
—Arthur Griffiths, 1899Let the people think they govern, and they will be governed.
—William Penn, 1693When the missionaries first came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, “Let us pray.” We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.
—Desmond Tutu, 1984Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of these two has the grander view?
—Victor Hugo, 1862If a patient is poor, he is committed to a public hospital as “psychotic”; if he can afford the luxury of a private sanitarium, he is put there with the diagnosis of “neurasthenia”; if he is wealthy enough to be isolated in his own home under constant watch of nurses and physicians, he is simply an indisposed “eccentric.”
—Pierre Marie Janet, 1930Whoever gulps down wine as a horse gulps down water is called a Scythian.
—Athenaeus, c. 230Whoever expects to walk peacefully in the world must be money’s guest.
—Norman O. Brown, 1959Oh, democracy! Whither are you leading us?
—Aristophanes, 414 BCWhere happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.
—George Santayana, c. 1905Those who travel heedlessly from place to place, observing only their distance from each other and attending only to their accommodation at the inn at night, set out fools, and will certainly return so.
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 1747A fool and water will go the way they are diverted.
—Ethiopian proverbWhen a man dies, and his kin are glad of it, they say, “He is better off.”
—Edgar Watson Howe, 1911