Never trust her at any time when the calm sea shows her false alluring smile.
—Lucretius, c. 60 BC
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Quotes
If you find excrement somewhere in the village, the chief was the one who put it there.
—Congolese proverbEnemies to me are the sauce piquant to my dish of life.
—Elsa Maxwell, 1955People react to fear, not love—they don’t teach that in Sunday school, but it’s true.
—Richard Nixon, 1975We must consider that we shall be a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world.
—John Winthrop, 1630When the stomach is full, it is easy to talk of fasting.
—St. Jerome, 395Rivalry adds so much to the charms of one’s conquests.
—Louisa May Alcott, 1866It is wretched business to be digging a well just as you’re dying of thirst.
—Plautus, c. 193 BCEvery tooth in a man’s head is more valuable than a diamond.
—Miguel de Cervantes, 1605Happiness is a warm puppy.
—Charles Schulz, 1971Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules, and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence; in other words it is war minus the shooting.
—George Orwell, 1945Men are generally more pleased with a widespread than with a great reputation.
—Pliny the Younger, c. 110I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it—yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don’t give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by.
—Orson Welles, 1953