Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other.
—Honoré de Balzac, 1847
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Quotes
What, 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, 1855Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved.
—Iris Murdoch, 1974Traveling is like flirting with life. It’s like saying, “I would stay here and love you, but I have to go; this is my station.”
—Lisa St. Aubin de Terán, 1989People commonly travel the world over to see rivers and mountains, new stars, garish birds, freak fish, grotesque breeds of human; they fall into an animal stupor that gapes at existence, and they think they have seen something.
—Søren Kierkegaard, 1843There be beasts that, at a year old, observe more, and pursue that which is for their good more prudently, than a child can do at ten.
—Thomas Hobbes, 1651We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us but for ours to amuse them.
—Evelyn Waugh, 1963A world is sooner destroyed than made.
—Thomas Burnet, 1684Be temperate in wine, in eating, girls, and sloth, or the Gout will seize you.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1734What is death? A scary mask. Take it off—see, it doesn’t bite.
—Epictetus, c. 110Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth but not its twin.
—Barbara Kingsolver, 1990There never was a good war or a bad peace.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1773Ocean. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man—who has no gills.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1906