There is a city in which you find everything you desire—handsome people, pleasures, ornaments of every kind—all that the natural person craves. However, you cannot find a single wise person there.
—Rumi, c. 1250
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Quotes
Rewards and punishment are the lowest form of education.
—Zhuangzi, c. 286 BCFrance has neither winter, summer, nor morals—apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.
—Mark Twain, 1879Even members of the nobility, let alone persons of no consequence, would do well not to have children.
—Yoshida Kenko, c. 1330If there is a technological advance without a social advance, there is, almost automatically, an increase in human misery.
—Michael Harrington, 1962There is no crime without precedent.
—Seneca the Younger, c. 60Nature contains no one constant form.
—Paul-Henri Dietrich d’Holbach, 1770The legislator is like the navigator of a ship on the high seas. He can steer the vessel on which he sails, but he cannot alter its construction, raise the wind, or stop the waves from swelling beneath his feet.
—Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835And to our age’s drowsy blood / Still shouts the inspiring sea.
—James Russell Lowell, 1848Money, not morality, is the principle of commercial nations.
—Thomas JeffersonFear has a smell, as love does.
—Margaret Atwood, 1972Great cities must ever be centers of light and darkness, the home of the best and the worst of our race, holding within themselves the highest talent for good and evil.
—Matthew Hale Smith, 1868I would delight in music, but the music is discordant.
—Xie Lingyun, c. 425