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Quotes

He who has nothing has no friends.

—Greek proverb

Nobody, who has not been in the interior of a family, can say what the difficulties of any individual of that family may be.

—Jane Austen, 1815

If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will find the merriest countenances in mourning coaches.

—Jonathan Swift, 1706

A passion for horses, players, and gladiators seems to be the epidemic folly of the times. The child receives it in his mother’s womb; he brings it with him into the world, and in a mind so possessed, what room for science, or any generous purpose?

—Tacitus, c. 100

The purest joy is to live without disguise, unconstrained by the ties of a grave reputation.

—Al-Hariri, c. 1108

Every thought is, strictly speaking, an afterthought.

—Hannah Arendt, 1978

’Tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers.

—William Shakespeare, c. 1595

For what do we live but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn?

—Jane Austen, 1813

No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor will we send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

—Magna Carta, 1215

Be temperate in wine, in eating, girls, and sloth, or the Gout will seize you.

—Benjamin Franklin, 1734

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

—Aristotle, c. 350 BC

Do not ask me to be kind; just ask me to act as though I were.

—Jules Renard, 1898

The civilized man has built a coach but has lost the use of his feet.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1841