A bad reputation is easy to come by, painful to bear, and difficult to clear.
—Hesiod, c. 700 BC
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Quotes
Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.
—John Wilkes Booth, 1865All that we know is nothing can be known.
—Lord Byron, 1812Some things are privileged from jest—namely, religion, matters of state, great persons, all men’s present business of importance, and any case that deserves pity.
—Francis Bacon, 1597A machine is a slave that neither brings nor bears degradation.
—Benjamin Disraeli, 1844There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.
—Anthony Trollope, 1862When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other.
—Chinese proverbI do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
—Galileo Galilei, 1615Plough deep while sluggards sleep.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1758Language is the armory of the human mind and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1817True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision.
—Edith Wharton, 1924Two things only the people anxiously desire, bread and the circus games.
—Juvenal, c. 121We should always presume the disease to be curable until its own nature proves it otherwise.
—Peter Mere Latham, c. 1845