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Quotes

The nature of God is a circle, of which the center is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere.

—Empedocles, c. 450 BC

No poems can please long, nor live, that are written by water drinkers.

—Horace, 35 BC

A first-class man subsists on the matter he destroys.

—Saul Bellow, 1989

He who travels by sea is nothing but a worm on a piece of wood, a trifle in the midst of a powerful creation. The waters play about with him at will, and no one but God can help him.

—Muhammad as-Saffar, 1846

What hath night to do with sleep?

—John Milton, 1637

Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

—George Bernard Shaw, 1903

There is a demon who puts wings on certain tales and launches them like eagles out into space.

—Alexandre Dumas, 1846

It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons.

—Friedrich Schiller, 1781

Men are what their mothers made them.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1860

Many need no other provocation to enmity than that they find themselves excelled.

—Samuel Johnson, 1751

Laughter almost ever cometh of things most disproportioned to ourselves and nature. Laughter hath only a scornful tickling.

—Philip Sidney, 1582

Let us make our own mistakes, but let us take comfort in the knowledge that they are our own mistakes.

—Tom Mboya, 1958

To live outside the law you must be honest.  

—Bob Dylan, 1966