The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
—L.P. Hartley, 1953
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Quotes
To place oneself in the position of God is painful: being God is equivalent to being tortured. For being God means that one is in harmony with all that is, including the worst. The existence of the worst evils is unimaginable unless God willed them.
—Georges Bataille, 1957Education has become a prisoner of contemporaneity. It is the past, not the dizzy present, that is the best door to the future.
—Camille Paglia, 1992Too many people have decided to do without generosity in order to practice charity.
—Albert Camus, 1956The hatred of relatives is the bitterest.
—Tacitus, 117The more men are massed together, the more corrupt they become. Disease and vice are the sure results of overcrowded cities.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1762The winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.
—Edward Gibbon, 1788To need to dominate others is to need others. The commander is dependent.
—Fernando Pessoa, c. 1935It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.
—The BibleHe laughs best who laughs last.
—French proverbResearch is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.
—Zora Neale Hurston, 1942To blow and to swallow at the same time is not easy; I cannot at the same time be here and also there.
—Plautus, c. 200 BCIn the matter of furnishing, I find a certain absence of ugliness far worse than ugliness.
—Colette, 1944