They say that gifts persuade even the gods.
—Euripides, 431 BC
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Quotes
Envy is the basis of democracy.
—Bertrand Russell, 1930Animals are such agreeable friends—they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.
—George Eliot, 1857The universe is an object of thought at least as much as it is a means of satisfying needs.
—Claude Lévi-Strauss, 1962If I played in New York, they’d name a candy bar after me.
—Reggie Jackson, 1976I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas and land on barbarous coasts.
—Herman Melville, 1853Who lives in fear will never be a free man.
—Horace, 19 BCWe wish away whole years, and travel through time as through a country filled with many wild and empty wastes, which we would fain hurry over, that we may arrive at those several little settlements or imaginary points of rest which are dispersed up and down in it.
—Joseph Addison, 1711I know what I have given you. I do not know what you have received.
—Antonio Porchia, 1943Nothing but a permanent body can check the imprudence of democracy.
—Alexander Hamilton, 1787The believer in magic and miracles reflects on how to impose a law on nature—and, in brief, the religious cult is the outcome of this reflection.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1878Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules, and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence; in other words it is war minus the shooting.
—George Orwell, 1945There will always be a lost dog somewhere that will prevent me from being happy.
—Jean Anouilh, 1934