It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.
—Niccolò Machiavelli, c. 1515
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Quotes
There is no man so fortunate that there shall not be by him when he is dying some who are pleased with what is going to happen.
—Marcus Aurelius, c. 175A Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year-old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy till they die!
—Philip Roth, 1969If you must take care that your opinions do not differ in the least from those of the person with whom you are talking, you might just as well be alone.
—Yoshida Kenko, c. 1330One race there is of men, one of gods, but from one mother we both draw our breath.
—Pindar, c. 450 BCOne doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
—André Gide, 1926Modern life is often a mechanical oppression, and liquor is the only mechanical relief.
—Ernest Hemingway, 1935I sometimes think of what future historians will say of us. A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers.
—Albert Camus, 1957We 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, 1877Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words?
—Marcel Marceau, 1958The whole secret of fencing consists but in two things, to give and not to receive.
—Molière, 1670Laws, like houses, lean on one another.
—Edmund Burke, 1765I find the pain of a little censure, even when it is unfounded, is more acute than the pleasure of much praise.
—Thomas Jefferson, 1789