There lurks in every human heart a desire of distinction which inclines every man first to hope and then to believe that nature has given him something peculiar to himself.
—Samuel Johnson, 1763
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Quotes
To know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.
—Quentin Crisp, 1968The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a star.
—Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, 1825I’ve a grand memory for forgetting.
—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886All men recognize the right of revolution, that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable.
—Henry David Thoreau, 1849The sea hath no king but God alone.
—Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1881There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.
—Arthur Conan Doyle, 1891The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.
—Che Guevara, 1968The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.
—G.K. Chesterton, 1908Diseases, at least many of them, are like human beings. They are born, they flourish, and they die.
—David Riesman, 1937Nothing is as obnoxious as other people’s luck.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1938If I lose at play, I blaspheme, and if my fellow loses, he blasphemes. So that God is always sure to be the loser.
—John Donne, 1623What are men anyway but balloons on legs, a lot of blown-up bladders?
—Gaius Petronius Arbiter, c. 64