The pleasure we hold in esteem for the course of our lives ought to have a greater share of our time dedicated to it; we should refuse no occasion nor omit any opportunity of drinking, and always have it in our minds.
—Michel de Montaigne, 1580
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Quotes
My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.
—Quentin Crisp, 1968Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradicable.
—W. Somerset Maugham, 1896According to the law of custom, and perhaps of reason, foreign travel completes the education of an English gentleman.
—Edward Gibbon, c. 1794The most fitting occupation for a civilized man is to do nothing.
—Théophile Gautier, c. 1835I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
—Thomas Jefferson, 1816I have sometimes thought that the laws ought not to punish those actions of evil which are committed when the senses are steeped in intoxication.
—Walt Whitman, 1842Childhood has no forebodings—but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow.
—George Eliot, 1860Those things are better which are perfected by nature than those which are finished by art.
—Cicero, c. 45 BCRevolution begins in putting on bright colors.
—Tennessee Williams, 1944No one makes a revolution by himself, and there are some revolutions which humanity accomplishes without quite knowing how, because it is everybody who takes them in hand.
—George Sand, 1851What experience and history teach is this—that nations and governments have never learned anything from history or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1830Time, when it is left to itself and no definite demands are made on it, cannot be trusted to move at any recognized pace. Usually it loiters, but just when one has come to count upon its slowness, it may suddenly break into a wild irrational gallop.
—Edith Wharton, 1905