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Quotes

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.

—George Eliot, 1866

Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth; without rain there would be no life.

—John Updike, 1989

Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.

—Lucretius, c. 58 BC

With the dead there is no rivalry.

—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1839

To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.

—Oscar Wilde, 1891

Nobody, sir, dies willingly.

—Antiphanes, c. 370 BC

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

—Immanuel Kant, 1784

Trade’s proud empire hastes to swift decay.

—Oliver Goldsmith, 1770

Good or ill fortune is very little at our disposal.

—David Hume, 1742

Toil is man’s allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that’s more than either, the grief and sin of idleness.

—Herman Melville, 1849

Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.

—Alexander Pope, 1738

What hath night to do with sleep?

—John Milton, 1637

God is our father, but even more is God our mother.

—Pope John Paul I, 1978