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Quotes

Youth, youth, springtime of beauty.

—Anthem of the National Fascist Party, c. 1924

I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas and land on barbarous coasts.

—Herman Melville, 1853

A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest.

—Book of Proverbs, c. 350 BC

Written laws are like spiderwebs: they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.

—Anacharsis, c. 550 BC

A mind lively and at ease can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer.

—Jane Austen, 1815

I am sure of this: that if everybody was to drink their bottle a day, there would not be half the disorders in the world there are now.

—Jane Austen, c. 1798

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them.

—Francis Bacon, 1625

I am no courtesan, nor moderator, nor tribune, nor defender of the people: I am myself the people.

—Maximilien Robespierre, 1792

What a torture to talk to filled heads that allow nothing from the outside to enter them.

—Joseph Joubert, 1807

It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.

—Dolores Ibárruri, 1936

The sick man is the parasite of society.

—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1889

I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.

—Thomas Hobbes, 1679

Every adolescent has that dream every century has that dream every revolutionary has that dream, to destroy the family.  

—Gertrude Stein, 1940