Everything that deceives does so by casting a spell.
—Plato, c. 375 BC
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Quotes
Let the French but have England, and they won’t want to conquer it.
—Horace Walpole, 1745Make the revolution a parent of settlement and not a nursery of future revolutions.
—Edmund Burke, 1790The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851For, say they, when cruising in an empty ship, if you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least.
—Herman Melville, 1851The king times are fast finishing. There will be blood shed like water, and tears like mist; but the peoples will conquer in the end.
—Lord Byron, 1821’Tis the sport to have the engineer / Hoist with his own petard.
—William Shakespeare, c. 1600Great cities must ever be centers of light and darkness, the home of the best and the worst of our race, holding within themselves the highest talent for good and evil.
—Matthew Hale Smith, 1868Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.
—Oscar Wilde, 1891Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don’t take it too seriously.
—Henry Miller, 1945The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases. We go on a journey chiefly to be free of all impediments and of all inconveniences—to leave ourselves behind, much more to get rid of others.
—William Hazlitt, 1822If there is a word in the dictionary under any letter from A to Z that I abominate, it is energy.
—Charles Dickens, 1865Such then is the human state, that to wish greatness for one’s country is to wish harm to one’s neighbors.
—Voltaire, 1764