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Quotes

I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for paradoxes.

—Maxine Hong Kingston, 1976

The one thing the world will never have enough of is the outrageous.

—Salvador Dalí, 1953

If I had been born a man, I would have conquered Europe. As I was born a woman, I exhausted my energy in tirades against fate and in eccentricities.

—Marie Bashkirtseff, 1884

Moderation in all things.

—Terence, 166 BC

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

—E.B. White, 1977

Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.

—Jane Austen, 1818

Friendship is a plant that loves the sun—thrives ill under clouds.

—Bronson Alcott, 1872

Don’t hit a man at all if you can avoid it, but if you have to hit him, knock him out.

—Theodore Roosevelt, 1916

The best physician is he who can distinguish the possible from the impossible.

—Herophilus, c. 290 BC

I have often said that if I wish to name-drop, I have only to list my ex-friends.

—Norman Podhoretz, 1999

Do you suppose it possible to know democracy without knowing the people?

—Xenophon, c. 370 BC

The mere existence of nuclear weapons by the thousands is an incontrovertible sign of human insanity.

—Isaac Asimov, 1988

In the country gossip is a pastime; in the city it is a warfare.

—W.M.L. Jay, 1870