There is no work of human hands which time does not wear away and reduce to dust.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 46 BC
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Quotes
Friends are ourselves.
—John Donne, 1603God is a concept by which we measure our pain.
—John Lennon, 1970I cannot but bless the memory of Julius Caesar, for the great esteem he expressed for fat men and his aversion to lean ones.
—David Hume, 1751If there is a word in the dictionary under any letter from A to Z that I abominate, it is energy.
—Charles Dickens, 1865Youth is the time to go flashing from one end of the world to the other both in mind and body, to try the manners of different nations, to hear the chimes at midnight.
—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1881Democracy produces both heroes and villains, but it differs from a fascist state in that it does not produce a hero who is a villain.
—Margaret Halsey, 1946Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term art, I should call it “the reproduction of what the senses perceive in nature through the veil of the soul.” The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of “artist.”
—Edgar Allan Poe, 1849Till taught by pain, / Men really know not what good water’s worth.
—Lord Byron, 1819One’s body, hair, and skin are a gift from one’s parents—do not dare to allow them to be harmed.
—Classic of Filial Piety, c. 200 BCIn revolutions men fall and rise. Long before this war is over, much as you hear me praised now, you may hear me cursed and insulted.
—William Tecumseh Sherman, 1864The peasants alone are revolutionary, for they have nothing to lose and everything to gain. The starving peasant, outside the class system, is the first among the exploited to discover that only violence pays. For him there is no compromise, no possible coming to terms.
—Frantz Fanon, 1961There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.
—Thomas Jefferson, 1790