Seafarers go to sleep in the evening not knowing whether they will find themselves at the bottom of the sea the next morning.
—Jean de Joinville, c. 1305
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Quotes
Don’t hit a man at all if you can avoid it, but if you have to hit him, knock him out.
—Theodore Roosevelt, 1916A change of fortune hurts a wise man no more than a change of the moon.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1732I do not mean to call an elephant a vulgar animal, but if you think about him carefully, you will find that his nonvulgarity consists in such gentleness as is possible to elephantine nature—not in his insensitive hide, nor in his clumsy foot, but in the way he will lift his foot if a child lies in his way; and in his sensitive trunk, and still more sensitive mind, and capability of pique on points of honor.
—John Ruskin, 1860Anything one is remembering is a repetition, but existing as a human being that is being, listening, and hearing is never repetition.
—Gertrude Stein, 1935To know intense joy without a strong bodily frame, one must have an enthusiastic soul.
—George Eliot, 1872Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
—Gore Vidal, 1981What one knows is, in youth, of little moment; they know enough who know how to learn.
—Henry Adams, 1907All law is of necessity defective in the beginning.
—Han Yu, c. 800It would be impossible to live for a year without disaster unless one practiced character-reading.
—Virginia Woolf, 1924The three little sentences that will get you through life. Number 1: Cover for me. Number 2: Oh, good idea, Boss! Number 3: It was like that when I got here.
—Nell Scovell, 1991The one thing the world will never have enough of is the outrageous.
—Salvador Dalí, 1953Exchange is no robbery.
—German proverb