At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.
—W. Somerset Maugham, 1896
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Quotes
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.
—Abraham Lincoln, 1861Fortune resists half-hearted prayers.
—Ovid, 8Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.
—Charles de Gaulle, 1963Understanding is a very dull occupation.
—Gertrude Stein, 1937The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.
—Judge Learned Hand, 1944The god of music dwelleth out of doors.
—Edith M. Thomas, 1887Revolutions are not made by men in spectacles.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1871One may like the love and despise the lover.
—George Farquhar, 1706The young man must store up, the old man must use.
—Seneca the Younger, c. 63When law can do no right,
Let it be lawful that law bar no wrong.
It is not right for a ruler who has the nation in his charge, a man with so much on his mind, to sleep all night.
—Homer, c. 750 BCMen have written in the most convincing manner to prove that death is no evil, and this opinion has been confirmed on a thousand celebrated occasions by the weakest of men as well as by heroes. Even so I doubt whether any sensible person has ever believed it, and the trouble men take to convince others as well as themselves that they do shows clearly that it is no easy undertaking.
—La Rochefoucauld, 1665