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Quotes

Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes.

—William James, 1902

You may drive out nature with a pitchfork, yet she’ll be constantly running back.

—Horace, 20 BC

On the loftiest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own rump.

—Michel de Montaigne, 1580

To know intense joy without a strong bodily frame, one must have an enthusiastic soul.

—George Eliot, 1872

The envious die not once, but as often as the envied win applause.

—Baltasar Gracián, 1647

In dealing with the dead, if we treat them as if they were entirely dead, that would show a want of affection and should not be done; or, if we treat them as if they were entirely alive, that would show a want of wisdom and should not be done.

—Confucius, c. 500 BC

No man has any natural authority over his fellow man.

—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1762

Some memories are like lucky charms, talismans, one shouldn’t tell about them or they’ll lose their power.

—Iris Murdoch, 1985

I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas and land on barbarous coasts.

—Herman Melville, 1853

Life’s no resting, but a moving.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, c. 1795

Home is the girl’s prison and the woman’s workhouse.

—George Bernard Shaw, 1903

In my dreams I sleep with everybody.

—Anaïs Nin, 1933

Speak without regard for the consequences, and it is too late for silence when disaster strikes.

—Huan Kuan, 81 BC