The sea receives us in a proper way only when we are without clothes.
—Pliny the Elder, 77
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Quotes
On the loftiest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own rump.
—Michel de Montaigne, 1580Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
—Mao Zedong, 1938Can you draw sweet water from a foul well?
—Brooks Atkinson, 1940It is easy to distinguish between the joking that reflects good breeding and that which is coarse—the one, if aired at an apposite moment of mental relaxation, is becoming in the most serious of men, whereas the other is unworthy of any free person, if the content is indecent or the expression obscene.
—Cicero, c. 44 BCNobody, who has not been in the interior of a family, can say what the difficulties of any individual of that family may be.
—Jane Austen, 1815The money market is to a commercial nation what the heart is to man.
—William Pitt, 1805They exchange their home and sweet thresholds for exile, and seek under another sun another home.
—Virgil, c. 30 BCIn dealing with the dead, if we treat them as if they were entirely dead, that would show a want of affection and should not be done; or, if we treat them as if they were entirely alive, that would show a want of wisdom and should not be done.
—Confucius, c. 500 BCI don’t believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there’s one thing that’s dangerous for an artist, it’s precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and all the rest of it.
—Federico Fellini, c. 1950Every ass thinks himself worthy to stand with the king’s horses.
—Gnomologia, 1732Honesty, for me, is usually the worst policy imaginable.
—Patricia Highsmith, 1960Everybody says it; and what everybody says must be true.
—James Fenimore Cooper, 1844