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Quotes

I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for paradoxes.

—Maxine Hong Kingston, 1976

Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.

—Bertrand Russell, 1930

Time’s violence rends the soul; by the rent eternity enters.

—Simone Weil, 1947

Every memory everyone has ever had will eventually be underwater.

—Anthony Doerr, 2006

If you are truly serious about preparing your child for the future, don’t teach him to subtract—teach him to deduct.

—Fran Lebowitz, 1981

The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.

—Laozi

My stern chase after time is, to borrow a simile from Tom Paine, like the race of a man with a wooden leg after a horse.

—John Quincy Adams, 1844

A private sin is not so prejudicial in this world as a public indecency.

—Miguel de Cervantes, 1615

The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us.

—Theodor Adorno, 1951

Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.

—Ambrose Bierce, 1906

Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all. 

—Aristotle, c. 350 BC

The more religious a country is, the more crimes are committed in it.

—Napoleon Bonaparte, 1817

Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.

—Oscar Wilde, 1891