No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.
—Samuel Johnson, 1776
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Quotes
It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men’s hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction.
—Francis Bacon, 1625Fame is but the empty noise of madmen.
—Epictetus, c. 100Children and fools cannot lie.
—John Heywood, 1546There is only one antidote to mental suffering and that is physical pain.
—Karl Marx, 1860Sex and drugs and rock and roll.
—Ian Dury, 1977What is outside my mind means nothing to it.
—Marcus Aurelius, c. 170I don’t believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear.
—Woody Allen, 1971On the loftiest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own rump.
—Michel de Montaigne, 1580Many, many steeples would have to be stacked one on top of another to reach from the bottom to the surface of the sea. It is down there that the sea folk live.
—Hans Christian Andersen, 1837Man is a tool-using animal. Nowhere do you find him without tools; without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.
—Thomas Carlyle, 1836The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
—L.P. Hartley, 1953The day unravels what the night has woven.
—Walter Benjamin, 1929