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Quotes

The spirit of revolution, the spirit of insurrection, is a spirit radically opposed to liberty.

—François Guizot, 1830

A frenzied passion for art is a canker that devours everything else.

—Charles Baudelaire, 1852

Modesty is a virtue not often found among poets, for almost every one of them thinks himself the greatest in the world.

—Miguel de Cervantes, 1615

If you would help another man, you must do so in minute particulars.

—William Blake, 1804

Drink does not drown care but waters it, and makes it grow faster.

—Benjamin Franklin, 1749

It’s only the futility of the first flood that prevents God from sending a second.

—Sébastien-Roch Nicolas Chamfort, c. 1794

Every gift has a personality—that of its giver.

—Nuruddin Farah, 1992

The main object of a revolution is the liberation of man, not the interpretation and application of some transcendental ideology.

—Jean Genet, 1983

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

—H.L. Mencken, 1921

They exchange their home and sweet thresholds for exile, and seek under another sun another home.

—Virgil, c. 30 BC

Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.

—Jane Austen, 1811

The men of today are born to criticize; of Achilles they see only the heel.

—Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, 1880

Where shall I, of wandering weary, find my resting place at last?

—Heinrich Heine, 1827