The friend of all humanity is no friend to me.
—Molière, 1666
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Quotes
Every thought is, strictly speaking, an afterthought.
—Hannah Arendt, 1978I 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, 1860Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own thoughts, unguarded.
—The Dhammapada, c. 400 BCWe have to ask ourselves whether medicine is to remain a humanitarian and respected profession or a new but depersonalized science in the service of prolonging life rather than diminishing human suffering.
—Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, 1969Recreations should be as sauces to your meat, to sharpen your appetite unto the duties of your calling, and not to glut yourselves with them.
—Thomas Gouge, 1672If I had been born a man, I would have conquered Europe. As I was born a woman, I exhausted my energy in tirades against fate and in eccentricities.
—Marie Bashkirtseff, 1884Do you suppose that will change the sense of the morals, the fact that we can’t use morals as a means of judging the city because we couldn’t stand it? And that we’re changing our whole moral system to suit the fact that we’re living in a ridiculous way?
—Philip Johnson, 1965Style is the image of character.
—Edward Gibbon, c. 1789Luck takes the step that no one sees.
—Publilius Syrus, c. 50 BCNo preacher is listened to but time, which gives us the same train and turn of thought that elder people have in vain tried to put into our heads before.
—Jonathan Swift, 1706It was funny how I could feel all alone and under surveillance at the same time.
—Cory Doctorow, 2013The sea is mother-death, and she is a mighty female, the one who wins, the one who sucks us all up.
—Anne Sexton, 1971