It is permitted to learn even from an enemy.
—Ovid, c. 8
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Quotes
Money speaks sense in a language all nations understand.
—Aphra Behn, 1677What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.
—Henry David Thoreau, 1850The Mughal’s nature is such that they demand miracles, but if a miracle were to be performed by some upright follower of our religion, they would say that it had been brought about by magic and sorcery. They would strike him down with spears or would stone him to death.
—Fr. Antonio Monserrate, 1590All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.
—Havelock Ellis, 1921Tomorrow we take to the mighty sea.
—Horace, 23 BCIf I played in New York, they’d name a candy bar after me.
—Reggie Jackson, 1976Any 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 BCI never know quite when I’m not writing. Sometimes my wife comes up to me at a party and says, Dammit, Thurber, stop writing. She usually catches me in the middle of a paragraph. Or my daughter will look up from the dinner table and ask, Is he sick? No, my wife says, he’s writing something.
—James Thurber, 1955God is our father, but even more is God our mother.
—Pope John Paul I, 1978As natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection.
—Charles Darwin, 1859Slang is as old as speech and the congregating together of people in cities. It is the result of crowding and excitement and artificial life.
—John Camden Hotten, 1859A great step toward independence is a good-humored stomach, one that is willing to endure rough treatment.
—Seneca the Younger, c. 60