Where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.
—George Santayana, c. 1905
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Quotes
Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.
—Anatole France, 1881Can we not live without pleasure, who cannot but with pleasure die?
—Tertullian, c. 215The gods play games with men as balls.
—Plautus, c. 200 BCA god cannot procure death for himself, even if he wished it, which, so numerous are the evils of life, has been granted to man as our chief good.
—Pliny the Elder, c. 77When you drink water, think of its source.
—Chinese proverbThe most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1870Men were born to lie, and women to believe them.
—John Gay, 1728Health can make money, but money cannot make health.
—Maria Edgeworth, 1833The law makes ten criminals where it restrains one.
—Voltairine de Cleyre, 1890It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.
—Niccolò Machiavelli, c. 1515The brain may be regarded as a kind of parasite of the organism, a pensioner, as it were, who dwells with the body.
—Arthur Schopenhauer, 1851It’s the educated barbarian who is the worst: he knows what to destroy.
—Helen MacInnes, 1963