Good or ill fortune is very little at our disposal.
—David Hume, 1742
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Quotes
In its function, the power to punish is not essentially different from that of curing or educating.
—Michel Foucault, 1975Revolutionaries are greater sticklers for formality than conservatives.
—Italo Calvino, 1957We are so constituted that we believe the most incredible things, and once they are engraved upon the memory, woe to him who would endeavor to erase them.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1774It is very foolish to attack one’s enemy openly if one can injure him in secret.
—Giambattista Giraldi, 1543I am sure of this: that if everybody was to drink their bottle a day, there would not be half the disorders in the world there are now.
—Jane Austen, c. 1798If the world were good for nothing else, it is a fine subject for speculation.
—William Hazlitt, 1823Fashion, n. A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1911Don’t you find it a beautiful clean thought, a world empty of people, just uninterrupted grass, and a hare sitting up?
—D.H. Lawrence, 1920Fame is no sanctuary from the passing of youth. Suicide is much easier and more acceptable in Hollywood than growing old gracefully.
—Julie Burchill, 1986With the dead there is no rivalry.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1839Nobody works as hard for his money as the man who marries it.
—Kin HubbardAfter all, crime is only a left-handed form of human endeavor.
—John Huston, 1950