What is food to one is to others bitter poison.
—Lucretius, 50 BC
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Quotes
A large city cannot be experientially known; its life is too manifold for any individual to be able to participate in it.
—Aldous Huxley, 1934Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.
—Saint Augustine, c. 400However harmless a thing is, if the law forbids it, most people will think it wrong.
—W. Somerset Maugham, 1896Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made—through disobedience and through rebellion.
—Oscar Wilde, 1891A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.
—George Eliot, 1876Without virtue, both riches and honor, to me, seem like the passing cloud.
—Confucius, c. 350 BCmy mind is
a big hunk of irrevocable nothing
Whoever gulps down wine as a horse gulps down water is called a Scythian.
—Athenaeus, c. 230Civilization, as we know it, is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor.
—Arnold Toynbee, 1948Cheating is more honorable than stealing.
—German proverbThere are truths that prove their discoverers witless.
—Karl Kraus, 1909What are men anyway but balloons on legs, a lot of blown-up bladders?
—Gaius Petronius Arbiter, c. 64