As the saying goes, an old woman is always uneasy when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb.
—Chinua Achebe, 1958
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Quotes
Avoid the talk of men. For talk is mischievous, light, and easily raised, but hard to bear and difficult to be rid of. Talk never wholly dies away when many people voice her: even talk is in some ways divine.
—Hesiod, c. 700 BCPeople are trapped in history, and history is trapped in them.
—James Baldwin, 1953The merchant always has fresh losses to expect, and the dread of base poverty forbids his rest.
—Decimus Magnus Ausonius, c. 390When a man dies, and his kin are glad of it, they say, “He is better off.”
—Edgar Watson Howe, 1911With the dead there is no rivalry.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1839Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve and from which he cannot escape.
—Erich Fromm, 1947What reason weaves, by passion is undone.
—Alexander Pope, 1972Ah! Freedom is a noble thing!
—John Barbour, 1375Better a thousand enemies outside the house than one inside.
—Arabic proverbDo you suppose it possible to know democracy without knowing the people?
—Xenophon, c. 370 BCLife is a farce, and should not end with a mourning scene.
—Horace Walpole, 1784To place oneself in the position of God is painful: being God is equivalent to being tortured. For being God means that one is in harmony with all that is, including the worst. The existence of the worst evils is unimaginable unless God willed them.
—Georges Bataille, 1957