A bad reputation is easy to come by, painful to bear, and difficult to clear.
—Hesiod, c. 700 BC
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Quotes
How sweet it is to have people point and say, “There he is.”
—Persius, c. 60Shame on the soul, to falter on the road of life while the body still perseveres.
—Marcus Aurelius, c. 170The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.
—Joseph Conrad, 1899We get a deal o’ useless things about us, only because we’ve got the money to spend.
—George Eliot, 1860What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.
—Frederick Douglass, 1855A human being must have occupation, if he or she is not to become a nuisance to the world.
—Dorothy L. Sayers, 1947The children of the revolution are always ungrateful, and the revolution must be grateful that it is so.
—Ursula K. Le Guin, 1983Everyone else is represented in Washington by a rich and powerful lobby, it seems. But there is no lobby for the people.
—Shirley Chisholm, 1970We must not always talk in the marketplace of what happens to us in the forest.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850Once a woman has lost her chastity she will shrink from nothing.
—Tacitus, c. 100Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height.
—E.M. Forster, 1910You must not grow used to making money out of everything. One sees more people ruined than one has seen preserved by shameful gains.
—Sophocles, c. 442 BC