Usually speaking, the worst-bred person in company is a young traveler just returned from abroad.
—Jonathan Swift, c. 1730Quotes
Music is our myth of the inner life.
—Susanne K. Langer, 1942Any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich; these are at war with one another.
—Plato, c. 378 BCWhen we define democracy now, it must still be as a thing hoped for but not seen.
—Pearl S. Buck, 1941Brains are the only things worth having in this world.
—L. Frank Baum, 1899Night affords the most convenient shade for works of darkness.
—John Taylor, 1750If I played in New York, they’d name a candy bar after me.
—Reggie Jackson, 1976Rewards and punishment are the lowest form of education.
—Zhuangzi, c. 286 BCThank God for tea! What would the world do without tea? How did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea.
—Sydney Smith, 1855The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt.
—Leviticus, c. 600 BCThe dead are often just as living to us as the living are, only we cannot get them to believe it. They can come to us, but till we die we cannot go to them. To be dead is to be unable to understand that one is alive.
—Samuel Butler, c. 1888Nothing is more narrow-minded than chauvinism or racial hatred. To me all men are equal; there are flatheads everywhere and I despise them all equally.
—Karl Kraus, 1909It belongs to a nobleman to weep in an hour of disaster.
—Euripides, 412 BC