Childhood has no forebodings—but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow.
—George Eliot, 1860
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Quotes
Is it a fact—or have I dreamed it—that, by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time?
—Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851The elephant, although a gross beast, is yet the most decent and most sensible of any other upon earth. Although he never changes his female, and hath so tender a love for her whom he hath chosen, yet he never couples with her but at the end of every three years, and then only for the space of five days.
—St. Francis de Sales, 1609Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
—E.B. White, 1944No nation was ever ruined by trade.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1774The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him.
—Sigmund Freud, 1912Of all objects that I have ever seen, there is none which affects my imagination so much as the sea or ocean. A troubled ocean, to a man who sails upon it, is, I think, the biggest object that he can see in motion, and consequently gives his imagination one of the highest kinds of pleasure that can arise from greatness.
—Joseph Addison, 1712The highest result of education is tolerance.
—Helen Keller, 1903Revolutions are celebrated when they are no longer dangerous.
—Pierre Boulez, 1989Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.
—G.C. Lichtenberg, c. 1780Water is the readiest means of making friends with nature.
—Ludwig Feuerbach, 1841Suffering has its limit, but fears are endless.
—Pliny the Younger, c. 108The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
—L.P. Hartley, 1953