Every gift has a personality—that of its giver.
—Nuruddin Farah, 1992
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Quotes
Envy and hatred are apt to blind the eyes and render them unable to behold things as they are.
—Margaret of Valois, c. 1600If you are truly serious about preparing your child for the future, don’t teach him to subtract—teach him to deduct.
—Fran Lebowitz, 1981A traveler’s chief aim should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the bad—as well as good—example of what they deliver concerning foreign places.
—Jonathan Swift, 1726Good men must not obey the laws too well.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844If there is a word in the dictionary under any letter from A to Z that I abominate, it is energy.
—Charles Dickens, 1865I doubt that we have any right to pity the dead for their own sakes.
—Lord Byron, 1817In time history must become a fairy tale—it will become again what it was in the beginning.
—Novalis, c. 1798Every thought is, strictly speaking, an afterthought.
—Hannah Arendt, 1978In 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, 1990Nothing puzzles me more than time and space, and yet nothing puzzles me less, for I never think about them.
—Charles Lamb, 1810The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity.
—James Fenimore Cooper, 1838The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
—Aristotle, c. 330 BC