It is very foolish to attack one’s enemy openly if one can injure him in secret.
—Giambattista Giraldi, 1543
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Quotes
To live outside the law, you must be honest.
—Bob Dylan, 1966A bad reputation is easy to come by, painful to bear, and difficult to clear.
—Hesiod, c. 700 BCWhen nature is overriden, she takes her revenge.
—Marya Mannes, 1958I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.
—John Maynard Keynes, 1917A true German can’t stand the French, / Yet willingly he drinks their wines.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1832An old man is twice a child, and so is a drunken man.
—Plato, c. 360 BC’Tis the destroyer, or the devil, that scatters plagues about the world.
—Cotton Mather, 1693The state dictates and coerces; religion teaches and persuades. The state enacts laws; religion gives commandments. The state is armed with physical force and makes use of it if need be; the force of religion is love and benevolence.
—Moses Mendelssohn, 1783Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1906Imagination continually outruns the creature it inhabits.
—Katherine Anne Porter, 1949They exchange their home and sweet thresholds for exile, and seek under another sun another home.
—Virgil, c. 30 BCKeep away from physicians. It is all probing and guessing and pretending with them. They leave it to nature to cure in her own time, but they take the credit. As well as very fat fees.
—Anthony Burgess, 1964