There is a city in which you find everything you desire—handsome people, pleasures, ornaments of every kind—all that the natural person craves. However, you cannot find a single wise person there.
—Rumi, c. 1250
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Quotes
Water, thou hast no taste, no color, no odor; canst not be defined, art relished while ever mysterious.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1939If I had the use of my body I would throw it out of the window.
—Samuel Beckett, 1951The only function of a school is to make self-education easier.
—Isaac Asimov, 1974Democracy is the fig leaf of elitism.
—Florence King, 1989The celestial machine is to be likened not to a divine organism but rather to a clockwork.
—Johannes Kepler, 1605An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.
—James Russell Lowell, c. 1865He that would eat the nut must crack the shell.
—Plautus, c. 200 BCAll the daughters of music shall be brought low.
—Ecclesiastes, c. 400 BCAh, there are no children nowadays.
—Molière, 1673Quarrels would not last long if the fault was only on one side.
—La Rochefoucauld, 1665The gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship.
—Winston Churchill, 1943The transition from tenseness, self-responsibility, and worry to equanimity, receptivity, and peace is the most wonderful of all those shiftings of inner equilibrium, those changes of personal center of energy.
—William James, 1902