One has to spend so many years in learning how to be happy.
—George Eliot, 1844
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Quotes
War is sweet to those who don’t know it.
—Erasmus, 1508If I lose at play, I blaspheme, and if my fellow loses, he blasphemes. So that God is always sure to be the loser.
—John Donne, 1623Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water.
—Zadie Smith, 2000A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch.
—Jane Austen, 1814I never practice, I always play.
—Wanda Landowska, 1953The first thing that a new migrant sends to his family back home isn’t money; it’s a story.
—Suketu Mehta, 2019The great difficulty lies in trying to transpose last night’s moment to a day which has no knowledge of it.
—Zora Neale Hurston, 1942Being a star has made it possible for me to get insulted in places where the average Negro could never hope to go and get insulted.
—Sammy Davis Jr., 1965Good men must not obey the laws too well.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844Men, my dear, are very queer animals—a mixture of horse nervousness, ass stubbornness, and camel malice.
—T. H. Huxley, 1895I have always been of the mind that in a democracy, manners are the only effective weapons against the bowie knife.
—James Russell Lowell, 1873Because the newer methods of treatment are good, it does not follow that the old ones were bad: for if our honorable and worshipful ancestors had not recovered from their ailments, you and I would not be here today.
—Confucius, c. 515 BC