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Quotes

To place oneself in the position of God is painful: being God is equivalent to being tortured. For being God means that one is in harmony with all that is, including the worst. The existence of the worst evils is unimaginable unless God willed them.

—Georges Bataille, 1957

Show me someone who never gossips, and I’ll show you someone who isn’t interested in people.

—Barbara Walters, 1975

The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.

—Basho, c. 1690

Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a god.

—Jean Rostand, 1939

The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of a gun.

—P.G. Wodehouse, 1929

If you have any soul worth expressing, it will show itself in your singing.

—John Ruskin, 1865

Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies.

—H.L. Mencken, 1925

Slang is as old as speech and the congregating together of people in cities. It is the result of crowding and excitement and artificial life.

—John Camden Hotten, 1859

Language is the archives of history.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844

Nature is the art of God.

—Thomas Browne, 1635

I cannot but bless the memory of Julius Caesar, for the great esteem he expressed for fat men and his aversion to lean ones.

—David Hume, 1751

If I played in New York, they’d name a candy bar after me.

—Reggie Jackson, 1976

It’s your business when your neighbor’s wall is in flames.

—Horace, 19 BC