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Quotes

As to the sea itself, love it you cannot. Why should you? I will never believe again the sea was ever loved by anyone whose life was married to it. It is the creation of omnipotence, which is not of humankind and understandable, and so the springs of its behavior are hidden.

—H.M. Tomlinson, 1912

Of troubles none is greater than to be robbed of one’s native land.

—Euripides, 431 BC

A dissolute and intemperate youth hands down the body to old age in a worn-out state.

—Cicero, 44 BC

To hold a throne is luck; to bestow it, virtue.

—Seneca the Younger, c. 45

Every revolution by force only puts more violent means of enslavement into the hands of the persons in power.

—Leo Tolstoy, 1893

It is the little causes, long continued, which are considered as bringing about the greatest changes of the earth.

—James Hutton, 1795

The decline of the aperitif may well be one of the most depressing phenomena of our time.

—Luis Buñuel, 1983

The brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over we realize this: that the human has been roughly handled, but that it has advanced.

—Victor Hugo, 1862

So many men, so many opinions.

—Terence, 161 BC

There is no happiness like that of a young couple in a little house they have built themselves in a place of beauty and solitude.

—Annie Proulx, 2008

Men are generally more pleased with a widespread than with a great reputation.

—Pliny the Younger, c. 110

We have to distrust each other. It is our only defense against betrayal.

—Tennessee Williams, 1953

I’m doomed to die, right? Why should I care if I go to Hades either with gout in my leg or a runner’s grace? Plenty of people will carry me there.

—Nicharchus, c. 90