If you wish to avoid foreign collision, you had better abandon the ocean.
—Henry Clay, 1812
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Quotes
To be sick is to enjoy monarchal prerogatives.
—Charles Lamb, 1833The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children.
—Edward, Duke of Windsor, 1957He that raises a large family, does indeed, while he lives to observe them, stand…a broader mark for sorrow; but then he stands a broader mark for pleasure too.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1786Credulity forges more miracles than trickery could invent.
—Joseph Joubert, 1811A monument is money wasted. My memory will live on if my life has deserved it.
—Pliny the Younger, c. 109Brain, n. An apparatus with which we think that we think.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1906The children of the revolution are always ungrateful, and the revolution must be grateful that it is so.
—Ursula K. Le Guin, 1983The world is for thousands a freak show; the images flicker past and vanish.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1776When a coward sees a man he can beat, he becomes hungry for a fight.
—Chinua Achebe, 1960An American will build a house in which to pass his old age and sell it before the roof is on.
—Alexis de Tocqueville, 1840People can say what they like about the eternal verities, love and truth and so on, but nothing’s as eternal as the dishes.
—Margaret Mahy, 1985Until you’ve lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was or what freedom really is.
—Margaret Mitchell, 1936