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Quotes

The future, like everything else, is no longer quite what it used to be.

—Paul Valéry, 1931

The sea is mother-death, and she is a mighty female, the one who wins, the one who sucks us all up.

—Anne Sexton, 1971

Punishment is a sort of medicine.

—Aristotle, c. 340 BC

There is not so contemptible a plant or animal that does not confound the most enlarged understanding.

—John Locke, 1689

There is nothing sillier than a silly laugh.

—Catullus, c. 60 BC

Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

—Mao Zedong, 1938

Those who go overseas find a change of climate, not a change of soul.

—Horace, c. 20 BC

They say that gifts persuade even the gods. 

—Euripides, 431 BC

Thought depends absolutely on the stomach, but in spite of that, those who have the best stomachs are not the best thinkers.

—Voltaire, 1770

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term art, I should call it “the reproduction of what the senses perceive in nature through the veil of the soul.” The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of “artist.”

—Edgar Allan Poe, 1849

The tune I remember, could I but keep the words.

—Virgil, 38 BC

Family! Thou art the home of all social evil, a charitable institution for comfortable women, an anchorage for house-fathers, and a hell for children.

—August Strindberg, 1886

One has to spend so many years in learning how to be happy.

—George Eliot, 1844