There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.
—Anthony Trollope, 1862
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Quotes
Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills.
—Voltaire, 1769As peace is of all goodness, so war is an emblem, a hieroglyphic, of all misery.
—John Donne, 1622Love is giving something you haven’t got to someone who doesn’t exist.
—Jacques LacanOcean. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man—who has no gills.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1906All the married heiresses I have known have shipwrecked.
—Benjamin Disraeli, 1880Hospitality consists in a little fire, a little food, and an immense quiet.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1856Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.
—Ecclesiastes, c. 250 BCAh! Freedom is a noble thing!
—John Barbour, 1375The state dictates and coerces; religion teaches and persuades. The state enacts laws; religion gives commandments. The state is armed with physical force and makes use of it if need be; the force of religion is love and benevolence.
—Moses Mendelssohn, 1783The more enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts.
—Italo Calvino, 1967I was born at a very early age. Before I had time to regret it, I was four and a half years old.
—Groucho Marx, 1959My face looks like a wedding cake left out in the rain.
—W.H. Auden, c. 1967