If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them.
—Francis Bacon, 1625
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Quotes
A maid that laughs is half taken.
—John Ray, 1670If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
—Mark Twain, 1894Quarreling must lead to disorder, and disorder exhaustion.
—Xunzi, c. 250 BCThe earth is our existence, and our body is attached to the earth.
—Daulat Qazi, c. 1650Fame is but the empty noise of madmen.
—Epictetus, c. 100Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.
—Shimon Peres, 1995Almsgiving tends to perpetuate poverty; aid does away with it once and for all.
—Eva Perón, 1949Don’t you find it a beautiful clean thought, a world empty of people, just uninterrupted grass, and a hare sitting up?
—D.H. Lawrence, 1920A joke is at most a temporary rebellion against virtue, and its aim is not to degrade the human being but to remind him that he is already degraded.
—George Orwell, 1945Friendship is not possible between two women, one of whom is very well dressed.
—Laurie Colwin, 1978The sleep of reason produces monsters.
—Francisco Goya, 1799Such then is the human state, that to wish greatness for one’s country is to wish harm to one’s neighbors.
—Voltaire, 1764