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Quotes

When a man dies, and his kin are glad of it, they say, “He is better off.”

—Edgar Watson Howe, 1911

He that will cheat you at play, will cheat you any way.

—Thomas Fuller, 1732

As usual, what we call “progress” is the exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance.

—Havelock Ellis, 1914

A sick child is always the mother’s property; her own feelings generally make it so.

—Jane Austen, 1816

Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.

—Kate Moss, 2009

One’s friends are divided into two classes, those one knows because one must and those one knows because one mustn’t.

—Sybil Taylor, 1922

The character which results from wealth is that of a prosperous fool.

—Aristotle, c. 322 BC

Because 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

Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear.

—William Shakespeare, 1592

There is no profit without another’s loss.

—Roman proverb

I imagine that one of the first forms of behavior, like one of the first signals, may be reduced to this: “Keep me warm.”

—Michel Serres, 1982

The world is dying of machinery; that is the great disease, that is the plague that will sweep away and destroy civilization; man will have to rise against it sooner or later.

—George Moore, 1888

Who hears the fishes when they cry?

—Henry David Thoreau, 1849