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Quotes

’Tis not a ridiculous devotion to say a prayer before a game at tables?

—Thomas Browne, 1642

Man and animals are really the conduit of food, the sepulcher of animals, and resting place of the dead, one causing the death of the other, making themselves the covering for the corruption of other dead bodies.

—Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1500

He alone who owns the youth gains the future.

—Adolf Hitler, 1935

In all the ancient states and empires, those who had the shipping, had the wealth.

—William Petty, 1690

To eat is to appropriate by destruction.

—Jean-Paul Sartre, 1943

I said of laughter, “It is mad,” and of pleasure, “What use is it?”

—Book of Ecclesiastes, 225 BC

A shopkeeper will never get the more custom by beating his customers; and what is true of a shopkeeper is true of a shopkeeping nation.

—Josiah Tucker, 1766

The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man’s body.

—Francis Bacon, 1605

Nature never breaks her own laws.

—Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1500

Whole nations have melted away like balls of snow before the sun.

—Dragging Canoe, 1775

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

—Immanuel Kant, 1784

Health indeed is a precious thing, to recover and preserve which we undergo any misery, drink bitter potions, freely give our goods—restore a man to his health, his purse lies open to thee.

—Robert Burton, 1621

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.

—Mark Twain, 1894