Alas! We are ridiculous animals.
—Horace Walpole, 1777
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Quotes
By nature, men are nearly alike; by practice, they get to be wide apart.
—Confucius, c. 500 BCI wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast, for I intend to go in harm’s way.
—John Paul Jones, 1778The state dictates and coerces; religion teaches and persuades. The state enacts laws; religion gives commandments. The state is armed with physical force and makes use of it if need be; the force of religion is love and benevolence.
—Moses Mendelssohn, 1783Money is mourned with deeper sorrow than friends or kindred.
—Juvenal, 128When a traveler returneth home, let him not leave the countries where he hath traveled altogether behind him.
—Francis Bacon, 1625You never enjoy the world aright, till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars.
—Thomas Traherne, c. 1670I hate the sight of monkeys; they remind me so of poor relations.
—Henry Luttrell, 1820Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.
—William Shakespeare, 1603Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends.
—Alexander Pope, 1709Tell us your phobias and we will tell you what you are afraid of.
—Robert Benchley, 1935Ours is an age which consciously pursues health, and yet only believes in the reality of sickness.
—Susan Sontag, 1963Make the revolution a parent of settlement and not a nursery of future revolutions.
—Edmund Burke, 1790