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Quotes

There is no work of human hands which time does not wear away and reduce to dust.

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 46 BC

Anything one is remembering is a repetition, but existing as a human being that is being, listening, and hearing is never repetition.

—Gertrude Stein, 1935

A friend who is very near and dear may in time become as useless as a relative.

—George Ade, 1902

There are some who, if a cat accidentally comes into the room, though they neither see it nor are told of it, will presently be in a sweat and ready to die away.

—Increase Mather, 1684

Strangers are an endangered species.

—Adrienne Rich, 1980

Everyone who is sick is someone else’s patient zero.

—Leslie Jamison, 2020

Even members of the nobility, let alone persons of no consequence, would do well not to have children. 

—Yoshida Kenko, c. 1330

The various modes of religion which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true, by the philosophers equally false, and by the magistrate as equally useful.

—Edward Gibbon, 1776

Charity is murder and you know it.

—Dorothy Parker, 1956

It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.

—Frederick Douglass, 1852

Is it a fact—or have I dreamed it—that, by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time?

—Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851

The charm, one might say the genius, of memory is that it is choosy, chancy, and temperamental: it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chawing a hunk of melon in the dust.

—Elizabeth Bowen, 1955

The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

—Miguel de Cervantes, 1615