It is wretched business to be digging a well just as you’re dying of thirst.
—Plautus, c. 193 BC
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Quotes
To be too conscious is an illness—a real thoroughgoing illness.
—Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1864Happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous.
—Pericles, c. 431 BCIn its function, the power to punish is not essentially different from that of curing or educating.
—Michel Foucault, 1975There are twelve hours in the day, and above fifty in the night.
—Madame de Sévigné, 1671Who sleepeth with dogs shall rise with fleas.
—John Florio, 1578Being thus arrived in good harbor, and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of heaven who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean and delivered them from all the perils and miseries thereof, again to set their feet on the firm and stale earth, their proper element.
—William Bradford, 1630What mighty contests rise from trivial things.
—Alexander Pope, 1712Fame is but the empty noise of madmen.
—Epictetus, c. 100Nothing is so easy as to deceive one’s self; for what we wish, that we readily believe.
—Demosthenes, 349 BCTime will reveal everything. It is a babbler and speaks even when not asked.
—Euripides, c. 425 BCDespotism achieves great things illegally; democracy doesn’t even take the trouble to achieve small things legally.
—Honoré de Balzac, 1831Happiness is no laughing matter.
—Richard Whately, 1843