The deed is everything, the glory naught.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1832
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Quotes
The gods play games with men as balls.
—Plautus, c. 200 BCThe spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.
—Judge Learned Hand, 1944Animals hear about death for the first time when they die.
—Arthur Schopenhauer, 1819The envious die not once, but as often as the envied win applause.
—Baltasar Gracián, 1647It has always been my practice to cast a long paragraph in a single mold, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to suspend the action of the pen till I had given the last polish to my work.
—Edward Gibbon, c. 1790A crust of bread and a corner to sleep in / A minute to smile and an hour to weep in.
—Paul Laurence Dunbar, 1895Were 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, 1849Man is always a wizard to man, and the social world is at first magical.
—Jean-Paul Sartre, 1939To need to dominate others is to need others. The commander is dependent.
—Fernando Pessoa, c. 1935Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
—Publilius Syrus, c. 30 BCAny city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich; these are at war with one another.
—Plato, c. 378 BCThe ingrained idea that, because there is no king and they despise titles, the Americans are a free people is pathetically untrue.
—Margot Asquith, 1922