It is He who has subdued the ocean so that you may eat of its fresh fish and bring up from its depth ornaments to wear. Behold the ships plowing their course through it. All this, that you may seek His bounty and render thanks.
—The Qur’an, c. 625
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Quotes
What a glut of books! Who can read them? As already, we shall have a vast chaos and confusion of books; we are oppressed with them, our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning.
—Robert Burton, 1621The important thing, I think, is not to be bitter. You know, if it turns out that there is a God, I don’t think that he’s evil. I think that the worst thing you could say about him is that basically he’s an underachiever. After all, you know, there are worse things in life than death.
—Woody Allen, 1975A functioning police state needs no police.
—William S. Burroughs, 1959The law’s made to take care o’ raskills.
—George Eliot, 1860The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas.
—George Santayana, 1905There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown. He wants to see what is reaching toward him and to be able to recognize or at least classify it. Man always tends to avoid physical contact with anything strange.
—Elias Canetti, 1960Despotism achieves great things illegally; democracy doesn’t even take the trouble to achieve small things legally.
—Honoré de Balzac, 1831He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
—Francis Bacon, 1625I’m at an age when my back goes out more than I do.
—Phyllis Diller, 1981You can’t find the soul with a scalpel.
—Gustave Flaubert, c. 1880War is fear cloaked in courage.
—William Westmoreland, 1966The beginning of health lies in knowing the disease.
—Miguel de Cervantes, 1615