The first requisite to happiness is that a man be born in a famous city.
—Euripides, c. 415 BC
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Quotes
So long as one believes in God, one has the right to do the Good in order to be moral.
—Jean-Paul Sartre, c. 1950Educate people without religion and you make them but clever devils.
—Arthur Wellesley, c. 1830God is a complex of ideas formed by the tribe, the nation, and humanity, which awake and organize social feelings and aim to link the individual to society and to bridle the zoological individualism.
—Maxim Gorky, 1913I have been a stranger here in my own land all my life.
—Sophocles, c. 441 BCGood fortune turns aside destruction by a great god.
—Instructions of Ankhsheshonqy, c. 100 BCWhen one has a famishing thirst for happiness, one is apt to gulp down diversions wherever they are offered.
—Alice Hegan Rice, 1917Every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.
—William James, 1902The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas.
—George Santayana, 1905Where shall I, of wandering weary, find my resting place at last?
—Heinrich Heine, 1827An irreligious man is not one who denies the gods of the majority, but one who applies to the gods the opinions of the majority. For what most men say about the gods are not ideas derived from sensation, but false opinions, according to which the greatest evils come to the wicked, and the greatest blessings come to the good from the gods.
—Epicurus, c. 250 BCThe earth is beautiful and bright and kindly, but that is not all. The earth is also terrible and dark and cruel.
—Ursula K. Le Guin, 1970Drinking with women is as unnatural as scolding with ’em.
—William Wycherley, 1675