For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?
—Jane Austen, 1813
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Quotes
The legislator is like the navigator of a ship on the high seas. He can steer the vessel on which he sails, but he cannot alter its construction, raise the wind, or stop the waves from swelling beneath his feet.
—Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835I have given up considering happiness as relevant.
—Edward Gorey, 1974In a court of fowls, the cockroach never wins its case.
—Rwandan proverbO citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.
—Horace, c. 8 BCFamily! Thou art the home of all social evil, a charitable institution for comfortable women, an anchorage for house-fathers, and a hell for children.
—August Strindberg, 1886“Abroad,” that large home of ruined reputations.
—George Eliot, 1866The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.
—Aristotle, c. 350 BCI proclaim night more truthful than the day.
—Léopold Sédar Senghor, 1956Good fortune is light as a feather, but nobody knows how to hold it up. Misfortune is heavy as the earth, but nobody knows how to stay out of its way.
—Zhuangzi, c. 300 BCIt is so difficult not to become vain about one’s own good luck.
—Simone de Beauvoir, 1963I quit life as from an inn, not as from a home.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 44 BCIt is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.
—Niccolò Machiavelli, c. 1515