The happy ending is our national belief.
—Mary McCarthy, 1947
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Quotes
The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.
—LaoziIf a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper that did his job well.
—Martin Luther King Jr., 1954Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it, and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, c. 1790The purest joy is to live without disguise, unconstrained by the ties of a grave reputation.
—Al-Hariri, c. 1108When the root lives on, the new leaves come back.
—Aeschylus, c. 458 BCWater has many ways of reminding us that when we are in it we are out of our element.
—Christopher Hitchens, 2008Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco pipes of those who diffuse it; it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker.
—George Eliot, 1876People will never fight for your freedom if you have not given evidence that you are prepared to fight for it yourself.
—Bayard Rustin, 1986On no other stage are the scenes shifted with a swiftness so like magic as on the great stage of history when once the hour strikes.
—Edward Bellamy, 1888This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.
—Abraham Lincoln, 1861A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
—James Joyce, 1922Fashion, n. A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1911