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
God walks among the pots and pans.
—Saint Teresa of Ávila, c. 1582The severity of a teacher is better than the love of a father.
—Saadi, 1258I shall embrace my rival—until I suffocate him.
—Jean Racine, 1669Nothing is as obnoxious as other people’s luck.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1938Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1755Trade’s proud empire hastes to swift decay.
—Oliver Goldsmith, 1770I came upon no wine, / So wonderful as thirst.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1923The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity.
—James Fenimore Cooper, 1838It has always been my practice to cast a long paragraph in a single mold, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to suspend the action of the pen till I had given the last polish to my work.
—Edward Gibbon, c. 1790Better no law than no law enforced.
—Danish proverbWhere it is a duty to worship the sun, it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.
—John Morley, 1872There are chance meetings with strangers that interest us from the first moment, before a word is spoken.
—Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1866