I said of laughter, “It is mad,” and of pleasure, “What use is it?”
—Book of Ecclesiastes, 225 BC
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Quotes
Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
—Oscar Wilde, 1893Style is the image of character.
—Edward Gibbon, c. 1789Be a good animal, true to your animal instincts.
—D.H. Lawrence, 1911In revolutions men fall and rise. Long before this war is over, much as you hear me praised now, you may hear me cursed and insulted.
—William Tecumseh Sherman, 1864A fool and water will go the way they are diverted.
—Ethiopian proverbNo families take so little medicine as those of doctors, except those of apothecaries.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1860The Mediterranean has the colors of a mackerel, changeable I mean. You don’t always know if it is green or violet—you can’t even say it’s blue, because the next moment the changing light has taken on a tinge of pink or gray.
—Vincent van Gogh, 1888Unexemplary words and unfounded doctrines are avoided by the noble person. Why utter them?
—Dong Zhongshu, c. 120 BCI tell you, there is such a thing as creative hate!
—Willa Cather, 1915We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words.
—Anna Sewell, 1877The smell of rain is rich with life.
—Estela Portillo Trambley, 1975Worry over what has not occurred is a serious malady.
—Solomon ibn Gabirol, 1050