Most men employ the first years of their life in making the last miserable.
—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688
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Quotes
To gaze upon a drop of water is to behold the nature of all the waters of the universe.
—Huangbo Xiyun, c. 850There is a kind of revolution of so general a character that it changes the mental tastes as well as the fortunes of the world.
—La Rochefoucauld, 1665My ideas are clear. My orders are precise. Within five years, Rome must appear marvelous to all the people of the world—vast, orderly, powerful, as in the time of the empire of Augustus.
—Benito Mussolini, 1929Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.
—Willa Cather, 1918They say that gifts persuade even the gods.
—Euripides, 431 BCAs natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection.
—Charles Darwin, 1859The drunken man is a living corpse.
—St. John Chrysostom, c. 390Not a change for the better in our human housekeeping has ever taken place that wise and good men have not opposed it—have not prophesied that the world would wake up to find its throat cut in consequence.
—James Russell Lowell, 1884A wise woman never yields by appointment. It should always be an unforeseen happiness.
—Stendhal, 1822Everybody says it; and what everybody says must be true.
—James Fenimore Cooper, 1844One race there is of men, one of gods, but from one mother we both draw our breath.
—Pindar, c. 450 BCHow to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do.
—William James, 1902