Men were born to lie, and women to believe them.
—John Gay, 1728
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Quotes
The boy is, of all wild beasts, the most difficult to manage.
—Plato, c. 348 BCThe sea serves the pirate as well as the trader.
—Prudentius, c. 405Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words?
—Marcel Marceau, 1958You 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. 1670What is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 46 BCIt has always been my practice to cast a long paragraph in a single mold, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to suspend the action of the pen till I had given the last polish to my work.
—Edward Gibbon, c. 1790Business? Why, it’s very simple; business is other people’s money.
—Alexandre Dumas, 1857A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.
—George Eliot, 1876I am sick and tired of publicity. I want no more of it. It puts me in a bad light. I just want to be forgotten.
—Al Capone, 1929There never is absolute birth nor complete death, in the strict sense, consisting in the separation of the soul from the body. What we call births are developments and growths, while what we call deaths are envelopments and diminutions.
—Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, 1714The best physician is he who can distinguish the possible from the impossible.
—Herophilus, c. 290 BCThe brightest light burns the quickest.
—Olive Beatrice Muir, 1900