Few sons are equal to their fathers; most fall short, all too few surpass them.
—Homer, c. 750 BC
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Quotes
The state dictates and coerces; religion teaches and persuades. The state enacts laws; religion gives commandments. The state is armed with physical force and makes use of it if need be; the force of religion is love and benevolence.
—Moses Mendelssohn, 1783To live on a day-to-day basis is insufficient for human beings; we need to transcend, transport, escape; we need meaning, understanding, and explanation.
—Oliver Sacks, 2012It is very foolish to attack one’s enemy openly if one can injure him in secret.
—Giambattista Giraldi, 1543The only authors whom I acknowledge as American are the journalists. They indeed are not great writers, but they speak the language of their countrymen, and make themselves heard by them.
—Alexis de Tocqueville, 1840O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.
—Horace, c. 8 BCEveryone should know nowadays the unimportance of the photographic in art—that truth, life, or reality is an organic thing which the poetic imagination can represent or suggest, in essence, only through transformation, through changing into other forms than those which were merely present in appearance.
—Tennessee Williams, 1944The sole business of a seaman onshore who has to go to sea again is to take as much pleasure as he can.
—Leigh Hunt, 1820Even a paranoid can have enemies.
—Henry Kissinger, 1977The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.
—Che Guevara, 1968What water gives, water takes away.
—Portuguese proverbUnder all speech that is good for anything, there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as eternity; speech is shallow as time.
—Thomas Carlyle, 1838Fame is no sanctuary from the passing of youth. Suicide is much easier and more acceptable in Hollywood than growing old gracefully.
—Julie Burchill, 1986