We often give our enemies the means for our own destruction.
—Aesop, c. 600 BCQuotes
Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved.
—Iris Murdoch, 1974Health indeed is a precious thing, to recover and preserve which we undergo any misery, drink bitter potions, freely give our goods—restore a man to his health, his purse lies open to thee.
—Robert Burton, 1621Conservation is not merely a thing to be enshrined in outdoor museums, but a way of living on land.
—Aldo Leopold, 1933We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us but for ours to amuse them.
—Evelyn Waugh, 1963All pain is one malady with many names.
—Antiphanes, c. 400 BCNature contains no one constant form.
—Paul-Henri Dietrich d’Holbach, 1770What reason weaves, by passion is undone.
—Alexander Pope, 1972To be sick is to enjoy monarchal prerogatives.
—Charles Lamb, 1833The period of a [Persian] boy’s education is between the ages of five and twenty, and he is taught three things only: to ride, to use the bow, and to speak the truth.
—Herodotus, c. 440 BCThe more men are massed together, the more corrupt they become. Disease and vice are the sure results of overcrowded cities.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1762Repetition is the mother of education.
—Jean Paul, 1807Darkness endows the small and ordinary ones among mankind with poetical power.
—Thomas Hardy, 1874