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Quotes

Is this dying? Is this all? Is this all that I feared when I prayed against a hard death? Oh, I can bear this! I can bear it!

—Cotton Mather, 1728

Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all. 

—Aristotle, c. 350 BC

Envy and hatred are apt to blind the eyes and render them unable to behold things as they are.

—Margaret of Valois, c. 1600

Imagination is the secret and marrow of civilization. It is the very eye of faith.

—Henry Ward Beecher, 1887

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

—Friedrich Schiller, 1781

I imagined it was more difficult to die. 

—Louis XIV, 1715

History in its broadest aspect is a record of man’s migrations from one environment to another.

—Ellsworth Huntington, 1919

Mother died today. Or maybe it was yesterday, I don’t know. 

—Albert Camus, 1942

Governments are not overthrown by the poor, who have no power, but by the rich—when they are insulted by their inferiors and cannot obtain justice.

—Dionysius of Halicarnassus, c. 20 BC

The mind is led on, step by step, to defeat its own logic.

—Dai Vernon, 1994

The first requisite to happiness is that a man be born in a famous city.

—Euripides, c. 415 BC

Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.

—Hebrews, c. 60

God never sent a messenger save with the language of his folk, that he might make the message clear for them.

—The Qur’an, c. 620