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Quotes

It is far, far better and much safer to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought.

—John Kenneth Galbraith, 1958

Best is water.

—Pindar, 476 BC

A sick child is always the mother’s property; her own feelings generally make it so.

—Jane Austen, 1816

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard for their own interest.

—Adam Smith, 1776

If I had the use of my body I would throw it out of the window.

—Samuel Beckett, 1951

Do not ask me to be kind; just ask me to act as though I were.

—Jules Renard, 1898

Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.

—Gore Vidal, 1981

Other nations use “force”; we Britons alone use “might.”

—Evelyn Waugh, 1938

The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.

—Albert Einstein, 1936

Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

—Alexander Hamilton, 1787

In settling an island, the first building erected by a Spaniard will be a church, by a Frenchman a fort, by a Dutchman a warehouse, and by an Englishman an alehouse.

—Francis Grose, 1787

Revolutions are not about trifles, but they are produced by trifles. 

—Aristotle, c. 350 BC

I count myself in nothing else so happy / As in a soul remembering my good friends.

—William Shakespeare, c. 1595