What keeps the democracy alive at all but the hatred of excellence, the desire of the base to see no head higher than their own?
—Mary Renault, 1956
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Quotes
I shall embrace my rival—until I suffocate him.
—Jean Racine, 1669In every ill turn of fortune, the most unhappy sort of unfortunate man is the one who has been happy.
—Boethius, c. 520No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor will we send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.
—Magna Carta, 1215Oil! Our secret god, our secret sharer, our magic wand, fulfiller of our every desire, our coconspirator, the sine qua non in all we do!
—Margaret Atwood, 2015Is there no way out of the mind?
—Sylvia Plath, 1962Many are the wonders of the world, and none so wonderful as man.
—Sophocles, c. 441 BCA man is not idle, because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labor and there is an invisible labor.
—Victor Hugo, 1862No 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, 1851Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements.
—Agnes Repplier, 1916There are two times in a man’s life when he should not speculate: when he can’t afford it, and when he can.
—Mark Twain, 1897Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.
—Charles Lamb, 1833Toil is man’s allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that’s more than either, the grief and sin of idleness.
—Herman Melville, 1849