Youth is the time to go flashing from one end of the world to the other both in mind and body, to try the manners of different nations, to hear the chimes at midnight.
—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1881
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Quotes
Usually speaking, the worst-bred person in company is a young traveler just returned from abroad.
—Jonathan Swift, c. 1730They say, “We only have the life of this world. We die and we live, and nothing destroys us but time.” Yet, not true knowledge have they of this—only belief.
—The Qur’an, c. 620I’ve been bathing in the poem / Of star-infused and milky sea / Devouring the azure greens.
—Arthur Rimbaud, 1871Mother died today. Or maybe it was yesterday, I don’t know.
—Albert Camus, 1942I sometimes think of what future historians will say of us. A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers.
—Albert Camus, 1957Profit is profit even in Mecca.
—Nigerian proverbNothing is so much to be shunned as sex relations.
—Saint Augustine, c. 387Seafarers go to sleep in the evening not knowing whether they will find themselves at the bottom of the sea the next morning.
—Jean de Joinville, c. 1305Nature is immovable.
—Euripides, c. 415 BCWords pay no debts.
—William Shakespeare, 1601Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of these two has the grander view?
—Victor Hugo, 1862Those who believe in freedom of the will have never loved and never hated.
—Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, 1893