If one hears bad music, it is one’s duty to drown it by conversation.
—Oscar Wilde, 1890
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Quotes
Without a decisive naval force, we can do nothing definitive, and with it, everything honorable and glorious.
—George Washington, 1781What experience and history teach is this—that nations and governments have never learned anything from history or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1830He laughs best who laughs last.
—French proverbThe bathing was so delightful this morning, and Molly so pressing with me to enjoy myself, that I believe I stayed in rather too long, as since the middle of the day I have felt unreasonably tired. I shall be more careful another time, and shall not bathe tomorrow as I had before intended.
—Jane Austen, 1804My ideas are clear. My orders are precise. Within five years, Rome must appear marvelous to all the people of the world—vast, orderly, powerful, as in the time of the empire of Augustus.
—Benito Mussolini, 1929Those who believe in freedom of the will have never loved and never hated.
—Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, 1893Every tooth in a man’s head is more valuable than a diamond.
—Miguel de Cervantes, 1605Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.
—E.M. Forster, 1951In life our absent friend is far away: / But death may bring our friend exceeding near.
—Christina Rossetti, 1881No families take so little medicine as those of doctors, except those of apothecaries.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1860There are times when reality becomes too complex for oral communication. But legend gives it a form by which it pervades the whole world.
—Jean-Luc Godard, 1965In its function, the power to punish is not essentially different from that of curing or educating.
—Michel Foucault, 1975