Our entire history is merely the history of the waking life of man; nobody has yet considered the history of his sleeping life.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, c. 1780
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Quotes
You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.
—Mario Cuomo, 1985Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing—the rest is mere sheep herding.
—Ezra Pound, 1934The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of a gun.
—P.G. Wodehouse, 1929Take back your golden fiddles, and we’ll beat to open sea.
—Rudyard Kipling, 1892The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honor or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1774Men have written in the most convincing manner to prove that death is no evil, and this opinion has been confirmed on a thousand celebrated occasions by the weakest of men as well as by heroes. Even so I doubt whether any sensible person has ever believed it, and the trouble men take to convince others as well as themselves that they do shows clearly that it is no easy undertaking.
—La Rochefoucauld, 1665It would be madness, and inconsistency, to suppose that things which have never yet been performed can be performed without employing some hitherto untried means.
—Francis Bacon, 1620Life’s no resting, but a moving.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, c. 1795Democracy produces both heroes and villains, but it differs from a fascist state in that it does not produce a hero who is a villain.
—Margaret Halsey, 1946Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
—Oscar Wilde, 1893Happiness does not dwell in herds, nor yet in gold.
—Democritus, c. 420 BCGo to the ant, you lazybones; consider its ways, and be wise.
—Book of Proverbs, c. 350 BC