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Quotes

The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases. We go on a journey chiefly to be free of all impediments and of all inconveniences—to leave ourselves behind, much more to get rid of others.

—William Hazlitt, 1822

The period of a [Persian] boy’s education is between the ages of five and twenty, and he is taught three things only: to ride, to use the bow, and to speak the truth.

—Herodotus, c. 440 BC

There is no art without Eros. 

—Max Frisch, 1983

Be not the slave of your own past. Plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so shall you come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1838

I shall soon be six-and-twenty. Is there anything in the future that can possibly console us for not being always twenty-five?

—Lord Byron, 1813

No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.

—Hannah Arendt, 1958

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.

—Oscar Wilde, 1895

A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.

—James Joyce, 1922

There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.

—Thomas Jefferson, 1790

If the people be the governors, who shall be governed?

—John Cotton, c. 1636

Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.

—Ecclesiastes, c. 250 BC

An honest man is all right even if he’s an idiot…but a crook must have brains.

—Maxim Gorky, 1902

A friend who is very near and dear may in time become as useless as a relative.

—George Ade, 1902