Alas! We are ridiculous animals.
—Horace Walpole, 1777
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Quotes
Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave.
—Thomas Browne, 1658The great difficulty lies in trying to transpose last night’s moment to a day which has no knowledge of it.
—Zora Neale Hurston, 1942One man’s loss is another man’s profit.
—Michel de Montaigne, c. 1580There’s folks ’ud hold a sieve under the pump and expect to carry away the water.
—George Eliot, 1859Oh, democracy! Whither are you leading us?
—Aristophanes, 414 BCAll progress is based upon a universal, innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
—Samuel Butler, c. 1890That is happiness: to be dissolved into something complete and great.
—Willa Cather, 1918There never is absolute birth nor complete death, in the strict sense, consisting in the separation of the soul from the body. What we call births are developments and growths, while what we call deaths are envelopments and diminutions.
—Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, 1714Science is a cemetery of dead ideas.
—Miguel de Unamuno, 1913Childhood has no forebodings—but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow.
—George Eliot, 1860To outwit an enemy is not only just and glorious but profitable and sweet.
—Plutarch, c. 100Everyone knows about everybody in Hollywood—who sleeps with whom, who doesn’t sleep, who does it standing on his head or in the dentist’s chair.
—Rock Hudson, 1982