In all the ancient states and empires, those who had the shipping, had the wealth.
—William Petty, 1690
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Quotes
Other nations use “force”; we Britons alone use “might.”
—Evelyn Waugh, 1938To live exiled from a place you have known intimately is to experience sensory deprivation. A wide-awake coma.
—Gretel Ehrlich, 1994Modesty is a virtue not often found among poets, for almost every one of them thinks himself the greatest in the world.
—Miguel de Cervantes, 1615If we pretend to respect the artist at all, we must allow him his freedom of choice, in the face, in particular cases, of innumerable presumptions that the choice will not fructify. Art derives a considerable part of its beneficial exercise from flying in the face of presumptions.
—Henry James, 1884A wise woman never yields by appointment. It should always be an unforeseen happiness.
—Stendhal, 1822There must be quite a few things a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them.
—Sylvia Plath, 1963In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1878I am weary of friends, and friendships are all monsters.
—Jonathan Swift, 1710A bull contents himself with one meadow, and one forest is enough for a thousand elephants; but the little body of a man devours more than all other living creatures.
—Seneca the Younger, c. 64Time is a veil interposed between God and ourselves, as our eyelid is between our eye and the light.
—François-René de Chateaubriand, c. 1820Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradicable.
—W. Somerset Maugham, 1896Can we not live without pleasure, who cannot but with pleasure die?
—Tertullian, c. 215