As matron and mistress will differ in temper and tone, so will the friend be distinct from the faithless parasite.
—Horace, c. 20 BC
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Quotes
There never is absolute birth nor complete death, in the strict sense, consisting in the separation of the soul from the body. What we call births are developments and growths, while what we call deaths are envelopments and diminutions.
—Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, 1714Better no law than no law enforced.
—Danish proverbTo get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
—Oscar Wilde, 1891Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
—Pablo Neruda, 1924I will never again command an army in America if we must carry along paid spies. I will banish myself to some foreign country first.
—William Tecumseh Sherman, 1863All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full.
—Book of Ecclesiastes, c. 250 BCIt is easy to distinguish between the joking that reflects good breeding and that which is coarse—the one, if aired at an apposite moment of mental relaxation, is becoming in the most serious of men, whereas the other is unworthy of any free person, if the content is indecent or the expression obscene.
—Cicero, c. 44 BCThe purest joy is to live without disguise, unconstrained by the ties of a grave reputation.
—Al-Hariri, c. 1108I am no courtesan, nor moderator, nor tribune, nor defender of the people: I am myself the people.
—Maximilien Robespierre, 1792Home is wherever I go.
—Indira Gandhi, 1955Where shall I, of wandering weary, find my resting place at last?
—Heinrich Heine, 1827Are we not ourselves nature, nature without end?
—Stanisław Lem, 1961