By the blessing of the upright the city is exalted, but it is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked.
—Book of Proverbs, c. 350 BC
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Quotes
Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.
—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688If you read somebody’s diary, you get what you deserve.
—David Sedaris, 2004For what do we live but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn?
—Jane Austen, 1813It raineth every day, and the weather represents our tearful despair on a large scale.
—Mary Boykin Chesnut, 1865Feasts must be solemn and rare, or else they cease to be feasts.
—Aldous Huxley, 1929Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.
—Anatole France, 1881The ingrained idea that, because there is no king and they despise titles, the Americans are a free people is pathetically untrue.
—Margot Asquith, 1922Under the wide and starry sky, / Dig the grave and let me lie.
—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1887An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.
—George Eliot, 1866Journalists belong in the gutter, because that is where the ruling classes throw their guilty secrets.
—Gerald Priestland, 1988My father! The sun is my father, and the earth is my mother, and on her bosom I will recline.
—Tecumseh, 1810The sea yields action to the body, meditation to the mind, the world to the world, all parts thereof to each part, by this art of arts—navigation.
—Samuel Purchas, 1613