This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.
—Abraham Lincoln, 1861
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Quotes
It is one thing to slander, another to accuse.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 56 BCIt has always been my practice to cast a long paragraph in a single mold, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to suspend the action of the pen till I had given the last polish to my work.
—Edward Gibbon, c. 1790Never greet a stranger in the night, for he may be a demon.
—Babylonian Talmud, c. 600If a parricide is more wicked than anyone who commits homicide—because he kills not merely a man but a near relative—without doubt worse still is he who kills himself, because there is none nearer to a man than himself.
—Saint Augustine, c. 420He that raises a large family, does indeed, while he lives to observe them, stand…a broader mark for sorrow; but then he stands a broader mark for pleasure too.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1786Better a thousand enemies outside the house than one inside.
—Arabic proverbAt the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference.
—Søren Kierkegaard, 1850Big head, little wit.
—French proverbThe fact is certain because it is impossible.
—Tertullian, c. 200Never trust her at any time when the calm sea shows her false alluring smile.
—Lucretius, c. 60 BCI think heaven will not be as good as earth, unless it bring with it that sweet power to remember, which is the staple of heaven here.
—Emily Dickinson, 1879Some of us would be greatly astonished to learn the reasons why others respect us.
—Marquis de Vauvenargues, 1746