Better free in a strange land than a slave at home.
—German proverb
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Quotes
Those who cross the seas change their climate but not their character.
—Roman proverbWhat mighty contests rise from trivial things.
—Alexander Pope, 1712A brilliant boxing match, quicksilver in its motions, transpiring far more rapidly than the mind can absorb, can have the power that Emily Dickinson attributed to great poetry: you know it’s great when it takes the top of your head off.
—Joyce Carol Oates, 1987What will not attract a man’s stare at sea?—a gull, a turtle, a flying fish!
—Richard Burton, 1883The law is not the same at morning and at night.
—George Herbert, c. 1633No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called games.
—W.H. Auden, 1962It is so difficult not to become vain about one’s own good luck.
—Simone de Beauvoir, 1963The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we’d get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. Probably at the next gas station.
—Hunter S. Thompson, 1971They exchange their home and sweet thresholds for exile, and seek under another sun another home.
—Virgil, c. 30 BCThe three little sentences that will get you through life. Number 1: Cover for me. Number 2: Oh, good idea, Boss! Number 3: It was like that when I got here.
—Nell Scovell, 1991Drink today and drown all sorrow; / You shall perhaps not do it tomorrow.
—John Fletcher, 1625O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.
—Horace, c. 8 BC