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Quotes

If I lose at play, I blaspheme, and if my fellow loses, he blasphemes. So that God is always sure to be the loser.

—John Donne, 1623

Traveling is like flirting with life. It’s like saying, “I would stay here and love you, but I have to go; this is my station.”

—Lisa St. Aubin de Terán, 1989

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.

—James Russell Lowell, c. 1865

The envious die not once, but as often as the envied win applause.

—Baltasar Gracián, 1647

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.

—Mark Twain, 1894

I am not Athenian or Greek but a citizen of the world.

—Socrates, c. 420 BC

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.

—Voltaire, 1764

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules, and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence; in other words it is war minus the shooting.

—George Orwell, 1945

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.

—Book of Ecclesiastes, c. 250 BC

A true German can’t stand the French, / Yet willingly he drinks their wines.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1832

It’s your business when your neighbor’s wall is in flames.

—Horace, 19 BC

A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated has not the art of getting drunk.

—Samuel Johnson, 1779

A god cannot procure death for himself, even if he wished it, which, so numerous are the evils of life, has been granted to man as our chief good.

—Pliny the Elder, c. 77