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Quotes

The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases. We go on a journey chiefly to be free of all impediments and of all inconveniences—to leave ourselves behind, much more to get rid of others.

—William Hazlitt, 1822

Art is a jealous mistress, and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture, or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1860

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

—H.L. Mencken, 1921

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

—Wendell Berry, 1983

I imagine that one of the first forms of behavior, like one of the first signals, may be reduced to this: “Keep me warm.”

—Michel Serres, 1982

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.

—Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1928

How like to us is that filthy beast the ape.

—Cicero, 45 BC

Other nations use “force”; we Britons alone use “might.”

—Evelyn Waugh, 1938

The character which results from wealth is that of a prosperous fool.

—Aristotle, c. 322 BC

Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered.

—William Shakespeare, c. 1610

Many a man who thinks to found a home discovers that he has merely opened a tavern for his friends.

—Norman Douglas, 1917

Technology feeds on itself. Technology makes more technology possible.

—Alvin Toffler, 1970

Man punishes the action, but God the intention.

—Thomas Fuller, 1732