Archive

Quotes

There are chance meetings with strangers that interest us from the first moment, before a word is spoken.

—Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1866

Let the French but have England, and they won’t want to conquer it.

—Horace Walpole, 1745

Of troubles none is greater than to be robbed of one’s native land.

—Euripides, 431 BC

Such then is the human state, that to wish greatness for one’s country is to wish harm to one’s neighbors.

—Voltaire, 1764

The noblest kind of retribution is not to become like your enemy.

—Marcus Aurelius, c. 175

Strangers are an endangered species.

—Adrienne Rich, 1980

Some of us would be greatly astonished to learn the reasons why others respect us.

—Marquis de Vauvenargues, 1746

We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.

—Oscar Wilde, 1887

All men naturally hate each other. We have used concupiscence as best we can to make it serve the common good, but this is mere sham and a false image of charity, for essentially it is just hate.

—Blaise Pascal, c. 1655

Children are all foreigners. We treat them as such.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1839

The less intelligent the white man is, the more stupid he thinks the black.

—André Gide, 1927

When you name yourself, you always name another.

—Bertolt Brecht, 1926

I am a man: I consider nothing human alien to me.

—Terence, 163 BC