The only competition worthy a wise man is with himself.
—Anna Jameson, 1846
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Quotes
All our enemies are mortal.
—Paul Valéry, 1942The populace may hiss me, but when I go home and think of my money, I applaud myself.
—Horace, c. 25 BCOne’s friends are divided into two classes, those one knows because one must and those one knows because one mustn’t.
—Sybil Taylor, 1922Whatsoever is, is in God.
—Benedict de Spinoza, 1677Drunkenness is the very sepulcher / Of man’s wit and his discretion.
—Geoffrey Chaucer, c. 1390I do not mean to call an elephant a vulgar animal, but if you think about him carefully, you will find that his nonvulgarity consists in such gentleness as is possible to elephantine nature—not in his insensitive hide, nor in his clumsy foot, but in the way he will lift his foot if a child lies in his way; and in his sensitive trunk, and still more sensitive mind, and capability of pique on points of honor.
—John Ruskin, 1860As to the sea itself, love it you cannot. Why should you? I will never believe again the sea was ever loved by anyone whose life was married to it. It is the creation of omnipotence, which is not of humankind and understandable, and so the springs of its behavior are hidden.
—H.M. Tomlinson, 1912Music today is nothing more than the art of performing difficult pieces.
—Voltaire, 1759Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
—Mao Zedong, 1938“I think, therefore I am” is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches.
—Milan Kundera, 1990When a man dies, and his kin are glad of it, they say, “He is better off.”
—Edgar Watson Howe, 1911In time history must become a fairy tale—it will become again what it was in the beginning.
—Novalis, c. 1798