Of troubles none is greater than to be robbed of one’s native land.
—Euripides, 431 BC
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Quotes
Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1735The righteous know the needs of their animals, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel.
—Book of Proverbs, c. 500 BCThe ceaseless, senseless demand for original scholarship in a number of fields, where only erudition is now possible, has led either to sheer irrelevancy, the famous knowing of more and more about less and less, or to the development of a pseudo-scholarship which actually destroys its object.
—Hannah Arendt, 1972When one has a famishing thirst for happiness, one is apt to gulp down diversions wherever they are offered.
—Alice Hegan Rice, 1917They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.
—Francis Bacon, 1605I shall curse you with book and bell and candle.
—Thomas Malory, c. 1470A jest breaks no bones.
—Samuel Johnson, 1781The noblest kind of retribution is not to become like your enemy.
—Marcus Aurelius, c. 175In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards.
—Mark Twain, 1897Seek not water, only show you are thirsty, / That water may spring up all around you.
—Rumi, c. 1260Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.
—Bertrand Russell, 1930For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?
—Jane Austen, 1813