The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.
—Vladimir Nabokov, 1941
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Quotes
For the merchant, even honesty is a financial speculation.
—Charles Baudelaire, c. 1865A crust of bread and a corner to sleep in / A minute to smile and an hour to weep in.
—Paul Laurence Dunbar, 1895Any serious attempt to do anything worthwhile is ritualistic.
—Derek Walcott, 1986One man’s loss is another man’s profit.
—Michel de Montaigne, c. 1580Play, wherein persons of condition, especially ladies, waste so much of their time, is a plain instance to me that men cannot be perfectly idle; they must be doing something, for how else could they sit so many hours toiling at that which generally gives more vexation than delight to people whilst they are actually engaged in it?
—John Locke, 1693To put one’s trust in God is only a longer way of saying that one will chance it.
—Samuel Butler, c. 1890Divine nature gave the fields; human art built the cities.
—Marcus Terentius Varro, c. 70 BCTo achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance.
—Jean Genet, 1949Men are able to assist fortune but not to thwart her. They can weave her designs, but they cannot destroy them.
—Niccolò Machiavelli, 1531Time is a veil interposed between God and ourselves, as our eyelid is between our eye and the light.
—François-René de Chateaubriand, c. 1820If the present be compared with the remote past, it is easily seen that in all cities and in all peoples there are the same desires and the same passions as there always were.
—Niccolò Machiavelli, c. 1513Fortune resists half-hearted prayers.
—Ovid, 8