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Quotes

I know what I have given you. I do not know what you have received.

—Antonio Porchia, 1943

Every fool becomes a philosopher after ten days of rain.

—Clover Adams, 1882

I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better.

—Samuel Butler, c. 1902

To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

—Oscar Wilde, 1891

Don’t hit a man at all if you can avoid it, but if you have to hit him, knock him out.

—Theodore Roosevelt, 1916

There are people whom one loves immediately and forever. Even to know they are alive in the world with one is quite enough.

—Nancy Spain, 1956

No preacher is listened to but time, which gives us the same train and turn of thought that elder people have in vain tried to put into our heads before.

—Jonathan Swift, 1706

Our entire history is merely the history of the waking life of man; nobody has yet considered the history of his sleeping life.

—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, c. 1780

Just as language no longer has anything in common with the thing it names, so the movements of most of the people who live in cities have lost their connection with the earth; they hang, as it were, in the air, hover in all directions, and find no place where they can settle.

—Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903

No families take so little medicine as those of doctors, except those of apothecaries.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1860

Usually speaking, the worst-bred person in company is a young traveler just returned from abroad.

—Jonathan Swift, c. 1730

Men willingly believe what they wish.

—Julius Caesar, c. 50 BC

Every man is worth just so much as the things he busies himself with.

—Marcus Aurelius, c. 175