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Quotes

War is the child of pride, and pride the daughter of riches.

—Jonathan Swift, 1697

Man is a troublesome animal and therefore is not very manageable.

—Plato, c. 349 BC

As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.

—Pope John Paul II, 1986

People commonly travel the world over to see rivers and mountains, new stars, garish birds, freak fish, grotesque breeds of human; they fall into an animal stupor that gapes at existence, and they think they have seen something.

—Søren Kierkegaard, 1843

When you name yourself, you always name another.

—Bertolt Brecht, 1926

Even diseases have lost their prestige, there aren’t so many of them left.

—Louis-Ferdinand Céline, 1960

It is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear. 

—Charlotte Brontë, 1847

Nothing but a permanent body can check the imprudence of democracy.

—Alexander Hamilton, 1787

I hate the present modes of living and getting a living. Farming and shopkeeping and working at a trade or profession are all odious to me. I should relish getting my living in a simple, primitive fashion.

—Henry David Thoreau, 1855

One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.

—E.B. White, 1977

I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king.

—Elizabeth I, 1588

The noblest kind of retribution is not to become like your enemy.

—Marcus Aurelius, c. 175

Animals, in their generation, are wiser than the sons of men, but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass.

—Joseph Addison, 1711