When a coward sees a man he can beat, he becomes hungry for a fight.
—Chinua Achebe, 1960
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Quotes
Lord, I do not ask that thou shouldst give me wealth; only show me where it is, and I will attend to the rest.
—Kate Douglas Wiggin, 1898One of the saddest things is that the only thing that a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You can’t eat eight hours a day, nor drink for eight hours a day, nor make love for eight hours.
—William Faulkner, 1958Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea? How did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea.
—Sydney Smith, 1855If a patient is poor, he is committed to a public hospital as “psychotic”; if he can afford the luxury of a private sanitarium, he is put there with the diagnosis of “neurasthenia”; if he is wealthy enough to be isolated in his own home under constant watch of nurses and physicians, he is simply an indisposed “eccentric.”
—Pierre Marie Janet, 1930Egypt was the mother of magicians.
—Clement of Alexandria, c. 200We need strength, we need energy, we need quickness, and we need brain in this country to turn it around.
—Donald Trump, 2015Nature never breaks her own laws.
—Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1500Revolutions never go backward.
—Thomas Skidmore, 1829What a heavy burden is a name that has become too famous.
—Voltaire, 1723Better a thousand enemies outside the house than one inside.
—Arabic proverbIt seems to me that we all look at nature too much and live with her too little.
—Oscar Wilde, 1897All God’s children are not beautiful. Most of God’s children are, in fact, barely presentable.
—Fran Lebowitz, 1978