When we see a natural style we are quite amazed and delighted, because we expected to see an author and find a man.
—Blaise Pascal, c. 1657
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Quotes
Make the revolution a parent of settlement and not a nursery of future revolutions.
—Edmund Burke, 1790Whole nations have melted away like balls of snow before the sun.
—Dragging Canoe, 1775Let my epitaph be, “Here lies Joseph, who failed in everything he undertook.”
—Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, 1790What one knows is, in youth, of little moment; they know enough who know how to learn.
—Henry Adams, 1907Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.
—Bertrand Russell, 1930An oppressed people are authorized, whenever they can, to rise and break their fetters.
—Henry Clay, 1842Men are able to assist fortune but not to thwart her. They can weave her designs, but they cannot destroy them.
—Niccolò Machiavelli, 1531Many are the wonders of the world, and none so wonderful as man.
—Sophocles, c. 441 BCSuch then is the human state, that to wish greatness for one’s country is to wish harm to one’s neighbors.
—Voltaire, 1764Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.
—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688People are trapped in history, and history is trapped in them.
—James Baldwin, 1953Don’t lose your mind unless you have paid for it.
—Stanisław Jerzy Lec, 1957