The only function of a school is to make self-education easier.
—Isaac Asimov, 1974
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Quotes
Friends are ourselves.
—John Donne, 1603Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends.
—Alexander Pope, 1709One is never as unhappy as one thinks, nor as happy as one hopes.
—La Rochefoucauld, 1664Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.
—W.H. Auden, c. 1940Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve and from which he cannot escape.
—Erich Fromm, 1947With the dead there is no rivalry.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1839Being a star has made it possible for me to get insulted in places where the average Negro could never hope to go and get insulted.
—Sammy Davis Jr., 1965If the heavens were all parchment, and the trees of the forest all pens, and every human being were a scribe, it would still be impossible to record all that I have learned from my teachers.
—Jochanan ben Zakkai, c. 75We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words.
—Anna Sewell, 1877If 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, 1884What reason weaves, by passion is undone.
—Alexander Pope, 1972The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea.
—James Joyce, 1922