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Quotes

The sea is mother-death, and she is a mighty female, the one who wins, the one who sucks us all up.

—Anne Sexton, 1971

What are men anyway but balloons on legs, a lot of blown-up bladders?

—Gaius Petronius Arbiter, c. 64

You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.

—Henrik Ibsen, 1882

The important thing, I think, is not to be bitter. You know, if it turns out that there is a God, I don’t think that he’s evil. I think that the worst thing you could say about him is that basically he’s an underachiever. After all, you know, there are worse things in life than death.

—Woody Allen, 1975

I had rather be in a state of misery and envied for my supposed happiness than in a state of happiness and pitied for my supposed misery.

—Elizabeth Inchbald, 1793

There are chance meetings with strangers that interest us from the first moment, before a word is spoken.

—Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1866

What hath night to do with sleep?

—John Milton, 1637

I was born without knowing why, I have lived without knowing why, and I am dying without either knowing why or how.

—Pierre Gassendi, 1655

The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us.

—Theodor Adorno, 1951

There never was a good war or a bad peace.

—Benjamin Franklin, 1773

Once a woman has lost her chastity she will shrink from nothing.

—Tacitus, c. 100

To know intense joy without a strong bodily frame, one must have an enthusiastic soul.

—George Eliot, 1872

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the need for thought.

—Henri Poincaré, 1903