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Quotes

It is permitted to learn even from an enemy.

—Ovid, c. 8

Anyone who doesn’t know foreign languages knows nothing of his own.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1821

Where it is a duty to worship the sun, it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.

—John Morley, 1872

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.

—Benjamin Franklin, 1776

If we do not maintain justice, justice will not maintain us.

—Francis Bacon, 1615

There lurks in every human heart a desire of distinction which inclines every man first to hope and then to believe that nature has given him something peculiar to himself. 

—Samuel Johnson, 1763

Being offended is the natural consequence of leaving one’s home.

—Fran Lebowitz, 1981

Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.

—Albert Camus, 1951

Sex: in America, an obsession; in other parts of the world, a fact.

—Marlene Dietrich, 1962

Some things are privileged from jest—namely, religion, matters of state, great persons, all men’s present business of importance, and any case that deserves pity.

—Francis Bacon, 1597

I shall curse you with book and bell and candle.

—Thomas Malory, c. 1470

The period is not very remote when the benefits of a liberal and free commerce will, pretty generally, succeed to the devastations and horrors of war.

—George Washington, 1786

A miracle entails a degree of irrationality—not because it shocks reason, but because it makes no appeal to it.

—Emmanuel Lévinas, 1952