I think it makes small difference to the dead if they are buried in the tokens of luxury. All this is an empty glorification left for those who live.
—Euripides, 415 BC
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Quotes
As to the sea itself, love it you cannot. Why should you? I will never believe again the sea was ever loved by anyone whose life was married to it. It is the creation of omnipotence, which is not of humankind and understandable, and so the springs of its behavior are hidden.
—H.M. Tomlinson, 1912Be courteous to all but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.
—George Washington, 1783Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills.
—Voltaire, 1769I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.
—Catherine the Great, c. 1796In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children.
—Herodotus, 440 BCThough this be madness, yet there is method in’t.
—William Shakespeare, 1603Those who believe in freedom of the will have never loved and never hated.
—Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, 1893Can we not live without pleasure, who cannot but with pleasure die?
—Tertullian, c. 215The thirsty earth soaks up the rain, / And drinks, and gapes for drink again.
—Abraham Cowley, 1656At the start there’s always energy.
—Suzan-Lori Parks, 2006Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.
—Shimon Peres, 1995No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.
—Hannah Arendt, 1958