If you stain clear water with filth, you will never find a drink.
—Aeschylus, 458 BC
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Quotes
All the daughters of music shall be brought low.
—Ecclesiastes, c. 400 BCIn settling an island, the first building erected by a Spaniard will be a church, by a Frenchman a fort, by a Dutchman a warehouse, and by an Englishman an alehouse.
—Francis Grose, 1787The life of the city never lets you go, nor do you ever want it to.
—Wallace Stevens, 1952The planet keeps to the astronomer’s timetable, but the wind still bloweth almost where it listeth.
—John Henry Poynting, 1899One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.
—Oscar Wilde, 1894All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full.
—Book of Ecclesiastes, c. 250 BCEvery revolution by force only puts more violent means of enslavement into the hands of the persons in power.
—Leo Tolstoy, 1893In Washington, the first thing people tell you is what their job is. In Los Angeles you learn their star sign. In Houston you’re told how rich they are. And in New York they tell you what their rent is.
—Simon Hoggart, 1990We should have a great many fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves.
—John Locke, 1690We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea—whether it is to sail or to watch it—we are going back whence we came.
—John F. Kennedy, 1962Speak without regard for the consequences, and it is too late for silence when disaster strikes.
—Huan Kuan, 81 BCI won’t be happy till I’m as famous as God.
—Madonna, c. 1985