Seize from every moment its unique novelty, and do not prepare your joys.
—André Gide, 1897
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Quotes
Style is the image of character.
—Edward Gibbon, c. 1789If you have any soul worth expressing, it will show itself in your singing.
—John Ruskin, 1865Jests and scoffs do lessen majesty and greatness and should be far from great personages and men of wisdom.
—Henry Peacham, 1622If there is a word in the dictionary under any letter from A to Z that I abominate, it is energy.
—Charles Dickens, 1865How gloriously legible are the constellations of the heavens!
—Anthony Trollope, 1859People will never fight for your freedom if you have not given evidence that you are prepared to fight for it yourself.
—Bayard Rustin, 1986The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man’s body.
—Francis Bacon, 1605It costs a lot of money to be rich.
—Peter Boyle, 2002If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait forever.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1843I 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, 1778Men have written in the most convincing manner to prove that death is no evil, and this opinion has been confirmed on a thousand celebrated occasions by the weakest of men as well as by heroes. Even so I doubt whether any sensible person has ever believed it, and the trouble men take to convince others as well as themselves that they do shows clearly that it is no easy undertaking.
—La Rochefoucauld, 1665Every thought is, strictly speaking, an afterthought.
—Hannah Arendt, 1978