Never trust her at any time when the calm sea shows her false alluring smile.
—Lucretius, c. 60 BC
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Quotes
All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.
—Toni Morrison, 1987I shall soon be six-and-twenty. Is there anything in the future that can possibly console us for not being always twenty-five?
—Lord Byron, 1813I have always been of the mind that in a democracy, manners are the only effective weapons against the bowie knife.
—James Russell Lowell, 1873It would seem that in history it’s never a tooth for a tooth, but a thousand, a hundred thousand for one.
—Sybille Bedford, 1963Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
—E.B. White, 1944What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.
—Frederick Douglass, 1855Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies.
—H.L. Mencken, 1925Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.
—Blaise Pascal, c. 1640In all the ancient states and empires, those who had the shipping, had the wealth.
—William Petty, 1690We 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, 1877Strength of mind is exercise, not rest.
—Alexander Pope, 1733The mill will never grind with water that is past.
—Daniel McCallum, 1870