The sea hath fish for every man.
—William Camden, 1605Quotes
One has to spend so many years in learning how to be happy.
—George Eliot, 1844He who dies of epidemic disease is a martyr.
—Muhammad, c. 630A friend who is very near and dear may in time become as useless as a relative.
—George Ade, 1902The winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.
—Edward Gibbon, 1788The first mistake of art is to assume that it’s serious.
—Lester Bangs, 1971Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world: it gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel. The picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.
—Susan B. Anthony, 1896If the present be compared with the remote past, it is easily seen that in all cities and in all peoples there are the same desires and the same passions as there always were.
—Niccolò Machiavelli, c. 1513Fame will go by and, so long, I’ve had you, fame. If it goes by, I’ve always known it was fickle. So at least it’s something I experienced, but that’s not where I live.
—Marilyn Monroe, 1962In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: they must be fit for it; they must not do too much of it; and they must have a sense of success in it.
—John Ruskin, 1850People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.
—Robert Byrd, 2005To think ill of mankind, and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.
—William Hazlitt, 1823The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity.
—James Fenimore Cooper, 1838