The way the neurotic sees it: bars on his door mean that he’s locked in; bars on your door mean that he’s locked out.

Mignon McLaughlin (1913-1983) American journalist and author
The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, ch. 5 (1966)
    (Source)
 
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He is her glory. Any woman could say it. For every one of them, God is in her child. Mothers of great men must have been familiar with this feeling, but then, all women are mothers of great men — it isn’t their fault if life disappoints them later.

Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) Russian poet, novelist, and literary translator
Doctor Zhivago [До́ктор Жива́го], Part 2, ch. 9 “Varykino,” sec. 3 [Yury] (1955) [tr. Hayward & Harari (1958), US ed.]
    (Source)

Comparing all motherhood to that of Mary toward Jesus.

Alternate translations:

He is her glory. Any woman could say it. For every one of them, God is in her child. Mothers of great men must have this feeling particularly, but then, at the beginning, all women are mothers of great men -- it isn’t their fault if life disappoints them later.
[tr. Hayward & Harari (1958), UK ed.]

He is her glory. Every woman can say the same. Her god is in her child. Mothers of great people should be familiar with that feeling. But decidedly all mothers are mothers of great people, and it is not their fault that life later disappoints them.
[tr. Pevear & Volokhonsky (2010)]

 
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If thou hast not Sense enough to speak, have Wit enough to hold thy tongue.

Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician, preacher, aphorist, writer
Introductio ad Prudentiam, Vol. 1, # 382 (1725)
    (Source)

The basic theme here is a common one. See also Twain (spurious), the Bible, Franklin, Thomas a Kempis, and Wilson.
 
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As fall the dews on quenchless sands,
Blood only serves to wash Ambition’s hands!

Lord Byron
George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) English poet
Don Juan, Canto 9, st. 59 (1823)
    (Source)
 
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Although the proportion of those who do think be extremely small, yet every individual flatters himself that he is one of the number.

Charles Caleb "C. C." Colton (1780-1832) English cleric, writer, aphorist
Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Vol. 1, Preface (1820)
    (Source)
 
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LADY BRACKNELL: I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing.

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Irish poet, wit, dramatist
The Importance of Being Ernest, Act 3 (1895)
    (Source)
 
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There are certain things in which mediocrity is intolerable: poetry, music, painting, public eloquence.
What torture it is to hear a frigid speech being pompously declaimed, of second-rate verse spoken with all a bad poet’s bombast!
 
[Il y a de certaines choses dont la médiocrité est insupportable: la poésie, la musique, la peinture, le discours public.
Quel supplice que celui d’entendre déclamer pompeusement un froid discours, ou prononcer de médiocres vers avec toute l’emphase d’un mauvais poète!]

Jean de La Bruyere
Jean de La Bruyère (1645-1696) French essayist, moralist
The Characters [Les Caractères], ch. 1 “Of Works of the Mind [Des Ouvrages de l’Esprit],” § 7 (1.7) (1688) [tr. Stewart (1970)]
    (Source)

(Source (French)). Alternate translations:

Several things are insupportable if they are but indifferent, as Poetry, Music, Painting and Public Speeches.
'Tis the worst punishment in the world to hear a dull Declamation deliver'd with Pomp and Solemnity, and bad Verses rehears'd with the Emphasis of a wretched Poet.
[Bullord ed. (1696)]

Somethings are insupportable if they are but indifferent, as Poetry, Musick, Painting, and Publick Speeches.
What a Punishment is it to hear a cold Declamation deliver'd with Pomp and Solemnity, and indifferent Verses repeated with all the Emphasis of a bad Poet!
[Curll ed. (1713)]

Some things won't bear a Mediocrity, as Poetry, Musick, Painting and Oratory.
What a cruel Torture is it to hear a dull Declamation delivered with Pomp and Solemnity, or bad Verses rehearsed with the Emphasis of a wretched Poet!
[Browne ed. (1752)]

In certain things mediocrity is unbearable, as in poetry, music, painting, and eloquence. How we are tortured when we hear a dull soliloquy delivered in a pompous tone, or indifferent verses read with all the emphasis of a wretched poet!
[tr. Van Laun (1885)]

There are some things that will not bear mediocrity; poetry, music, painting, oratory.
[tr. Lee (1903)]

 
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HEAVEN, n. A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you expound your own.

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) American writer and journalist
“Heaven,” The Cynic’s Word Book (1906)
    (Source)

Included in The Devil's Dictionary (1911). Originally published in the "Devil's Dictionary" column in the San Francisco Wasp (1885-05-23).
 
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Of all treasures this is best:
To find a noble-minded wife.

[τῶν γὰρ πλούτων ὅδ’ ἄριστος
γενναῖον λέχος εὑρεῖν.]

Euripides (485?-406? BC) Greek tragic dramatist
Andromeda [Ανδρομέδα], frag. 137 (TGF) (412 BC)

Nauck frag. 137, Barnes frag. 30, Musgrave frag. 14. (Source (Greek)). Alternate translations:

The best of treasures is a virtuous Wife.
[tr. Wodhall (1809)]

Best of all riches is to find a noble spouse.
[tr. @sentaniq (2014)]

 
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Fish and Visitors stink in 3 days.

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher, aphorist
Poor Richard (1736 ed.)
    (Source)
 
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The dinner table is the center for the teaching and practicing not just of table manners but of conversation, consideration, tolerance, family feeling, and just about all the other accomplishments of polite society except the minuet.

Judith Martin (b. 1938) American author, journalist, etiquette expert [a.k.a. Miss Manners]
Miss Manners’ Guide for the Turn-of-the-Millennium, Part 2 “Home Life,” “Parents and Children” (1989)
    (Source)
 
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Mistakes are, after all, the foundation of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not.

Carl Jung (1875-1961) Swiss psychologist
Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, ch. 15 “Conclusion,” ¶ 429 (1959; 1968 ed.) [tr. Hull]

Final words.
 
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A kiss is a contact, a union, an exchange. It is unknown to certain races and tribes, while others know it and consider it with disgust. They all suffer a loss. A kiss can be a cold formula, or a token of familial relationship or a prelude to the act of love. It can also be a revelation in an unspoken, secret language of feelings that have never been expressed in words.

harry harrison
Harry Harrison (1925-2012) American author [b. Henry Maxwell Dempsey]
The Jupiter Plague, ch. 9 (1982)
    (Source)

The same phrase occurs in the "shorter and substantially different" earlier Plague from Space, ch. 9 (1965).
 
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Let us have done with vain regrets and longings for the days that never will be ours again. Our work lies in front, not behind us; and “Forward!” is our motto. Let us not sit with folded hands, gazing upon the past as if it were the building; it is but the foundation. Let us not waste heart and life thinking of what might have been and forgetting the may be that lies before us. Opportunities flit by while we sit regretting the chances we have lost, and the happiness that comes to us we heed not, because of the happiness that is gone.

Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927) English writer, humorist [Jerome Klapka Jerome]
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, “On Memory” (1886)
    (Source)

First published in Home Chimes (1885-09-26).
 
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BANQUO: If you can look into the seeds of time
And say which grain will grow and which will not,
Speak, then, to me, who neither beg nor fear
Your favors nor your hate.

Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Macbeth, Act 1, sc. 3, l. 61ff (1.3.61-64) (1606)
    (Source)

To the Witches (Weïrd Sisters).
 
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With the change of one’s self-interest, there comes also a change in one’s ideology, one’s values, one’s principles.

Alan Paton
Alan Paton (1903-1988) South African author, activist
“The Challenge of Fear,” The Saturday Review (1967-09-09)
    (Source)

Collected in Sheridan Baker, The Essayist (1981).
 
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Keep not ill men company, lest you increase the number.

George Herbert (1593-1633) Welsh priest, orator, poet.
Jacula Prudentum, or Outlandish Proverbs, Sentences, &c. (compiler), # 314 (1640 ed.)
    (Source)
 
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Ah, Postumus! they fleet away,
Our years, nor piety one hour
Can win from wrinkles and decay,
And Death’s indomitable power.
 
[Eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume,
labuntur anni nec pietas moram
rugis et instanti senectae
adferet indomitaeque morti.]

Horace (65-8 BC) Roman poet and satirist [Quintus Horacius Flaccus]
Odes [Carmina], Book 2, # 14, l. 1ff (2.14.1-4) (23 BC) [tr. Conington (1872)]
    (Source)

"To Postumus." It is unclear which acquaintance of Horace this was addressed to; the name is popularly associated (back to Horace's time) with being given to a child born after the death of their father (which gives it a certain irony here); in reality, it was originally given to the (broader) category of last children of a father.

(Source (Latin)). Alternate translations:

Ah Posthumus! the years of man
Slide on with winged pace, nor can
Vertue reprieve her friend
From wrinkles, age, and end.
[tr. Fanshawe; ed. Brome (1666)]

Time (Posthumus) goes with full sail,
Nor can thy honest heart avail
A furrow'd brow, old age at hand,
Or Death unconquer'd to withstand:
One long night,
Shall hide this light
From all our sight,
And equal Death
Shall few dayes hence,
stop every breath.
[tr. S. W.; ed. Brome (1666)]

The whirling year, Ah Friend! the whirling year Rouls on apace;
And soon shall wrinkles plough thy wither'd Face:
In vain you wast your Pious breath,
No prayers can stay, no vows defer
The swift approach of Age, and conqu'ring Death.
[tr. Creech (1684)]

Alas! my Postumus, my Postumus, the fleeting years glide on; nor will piety cause any delay to wrinkles, and advancing old age, and insuperable death.
[tr. Smart/Buckley (1853)]

Ah, Posthumus, the years, the fleeting years
Still onwards, onwards glide;
Nor mortal virtue may
Time's wrinkling fingers stay,
Nor Age's sure advance, nor Death's all-conquering stride.
[tr. Martin (1864)]

Postumus, Postumus, the years glide by us,
Alas! no piety delays the wrinkles,
Nor old age imminent,
Nor the indomitable hand of Death.
[tr. Bulwer-Lytton (1870)]

Ah! Postumus! Devotion fails
The lapse of gliding years to stay,
With wrinkled age it nought avails
Nor conjures conquering Death away.
[tr. Gladstone (1894)]

Ah me! how quickly, Postumus, Postumus,
Glide by the years! nor even can piety
Delay the wrinkles, and advancing
Age, and attacks of unconquer'd Hades.
[tr. Phelps (1897)]

Alas! Postumus, Postumus, the fleeing years
Slip by, and duteousness does not give pause
To wrinkles, or to hasting age,
Or death unconquerable.
[tr. Garnsey (1907)]

Ah! Postumus, Postumus, fast fly the years,
And prayers to wrinkles and impending age
Bring not delay; nor shalt assuage
Death's stroke with pious tears.
[tr. Marshall (1908)]

Alas, O Postumus, Postumus, the years glide swiftly by, nor will righteousness give pause to wrinkles, to advancing age, or Death invincible.
[tr. Bennett (Loeb) (1912)]

Ah, Postumus, my Postumus, the fleeting years roll by;
Wrinkles and ever nearing eld stay not for piety:
Relentless they, relentless death's unconquered tyranny.
[tr. Mills (1924)]

Ah, how they glide by, Postumus, Postumus,
The years, the swift years! Wrinkles and imminent
Old age and death, whom no one conquers --
Piety cannot delay their onward
March.
[tr. Michie (1963)]

Oh year by year, Póstumay,
Póstumay, time slips by,
And holiness can't stop us drying,
Or hold off death.
[tr. Raffel (1983)]

How the years go by, alas how the years go by.
Behaving well can do nothing at all about it.
Wrinkles will come, old age will come, and death,
Indomitable. Nothing at all will work.
[tr. Ferry (1997)]

Alas! O Postumus, Postumus! Swiftly the years glide by, and no amount of piety will wrinkles delay or halt approaching age or ineluctable death.
[tr. Alexander (1999)]

Oh how the years fly, Postumus, Postumus,
they’re slipping away, virtue brings no respite
from the wrinkles that furrow our brow,
impending old age, Death the invincible.
[tr. Kline (2015)]

 
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Don’t you believe ’em when they say that what you don’t know won’t hurt you. Biggest lie ever was. See it all and go your own way and nothing’ll hurt you. If what you see ain’t pretty, what’s the odds! See it anyway. Then next time you don’t have to look.

Edna Ferber (1886-1968) American author and playwright
Show Boat, ch. 13 (1926)
    (Source)

Captain Andy Hawkes to his daughter, Magnolia.
 
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Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.

The Bible (The Old Testament) (14th - 2nd C BC) Judeo-Christian sacred scripture [Tanakh, Hebrew Bible], incl. the Apocrypha (Deuterocanonicals)
Daniel 12:4 [KJV (1611)]
    (Source)

The Old Greek version of the Septuagint uses a word that translated out to "evil" or "wickedness" or "injustice". Later versions, particularly Theodotian's favored translation, used "knowledge" (Hebrew הַדָּֽעַת or Greek γνῶσις) [notes 1, 2, 3, 4].

Quoted by Francis Bacon as an epigraph on the frontispiece of his Instauratio Magna [The Great Instauration] (1620), in both English (as the King James Version) and Latin: "Multi pertransibunt & augebitur scientia."

Alternate translations:

Many will wander this way and that, and wickedness will go on increasing.
[JB (1966)]

Meanwhile, many people will waste their efforts trying to understand what is happening.
[GNT (1976)]

Many will roam about, this way and that, and wickedness will continue to increase.
[NJB (1985)]

Many will stray far, but knowledge will increase.
[CEB (2011)]

Many shall be running back and forth, and evil shall increase.
[NRSV (2021 ed.)]

Many will range far and wide and knowledge will increase.
[RJPS (2023 ed.)]

 
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Morals refine manners, as manners refine morals.

[Die Sittlichkeit verfeinert die Sitte, und die Sitte wiederum die Sittlichkeit.]

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830-1916) Austrian writer
Aphorisms [Aphorismen], No. 133 (1880) [tr. Wister (1883)]
    (Source)

(Source (German)). Alternate translation:

Morality refines customs and customs in turn refine morality.
[tr. Scrase/Mieder (1994)]

 
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Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination: never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day.

Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773) English statesman, wit [Philip Dormer Stanhope]
Letter (1749-12-26) to his son (#211)
    (Source)

Chesterfield either loves the "Never put off" phrase or is very familiar with it: he repeats it a few months later in Letter 216 (1750-02-05), and then a few years later in Letter 309 (1754-02-26).

See Fuller and Franklin.
 
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Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher, aphorist
“The Way to Wealth” (1758)
    (Source)

Today, this is more commonly given as "Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today."

Franklin had used a different phrasing in Poor Richard (1742 ed.): "Have you somewhat to do To-morrow, do it To-day." That was reprinted in Poor Richard Improved (1758 ed.), but when that latter work was condensed into "The Way to Wealth" that same year, the wording above was used.

As with so many of Franklin's "Poor Richard" aphorisms, this was not original to him. Thomas Fuller uses a similar phrase in 1725.

The sentiment itself has been mocked or modified by others such as Mark Twain, Josh Bilings, Aldous Huxley, Pablo Picasso, and Mignon McLaughlin.
 
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Never do that to Morrow, which thou canst as well do to Day.

Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician, preacher, aphorist, writer
Introductio ad Prudentiam, Vol. 1, # 124 (1725)
    (Source)

See Franklin.
 
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GALE: Childhood is Last Chance Gulch for happiness. After that, you know too much.

Tom Stoppard (b. 1937) Czech-English playwright and screenwriter
Where Are They Now? (1968)
    (Source)
 
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You know how interesting the purchase of a sponge-cake is to me.

Jane Austen
Jane Austen (1775-1817) English author
Letter (1808-06-15) to Cassandra Austen
    (Source)

First recorded use of the term "sponge-cake" in English.
 
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FRIENDSHIP. A mutual belief in the same fallacies, mountebanks, hobgoblins and imbecilities.

H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) American writer and journalist [Henry Lewis Mencken]
A Book of Burlesques, “The Jazz Webster” (1924)
    (Source)

Variant:

Friendship is a common belief in the same fallacies, mountebanks and hobgoblins.
[Chrestomathy, ch. 30 "Sententiae" (1949)]

 
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The uses of a dictionary: at thirteen we look up lewd, licentious, lascivious; at thirty, febrile and inchoate; at fifty, endostosis.

Mignon McLaughlin (1913-1983) American journalist and author
The Neurotic’s Notebook, ch. 10 (1963)
    (Source)
 
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But ne’ertheless I hope it is no crime
To laugh at all things — for I wish to know
What, after all, are all things — but a show?

Lord Byron
George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) English poet
Don Juan, Canto 7, st. 2 (1823)
    (Source)
 
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Mental pleasures never cloy: unlike those of the body, they are increased by repetition, approved of by reflection, and strengthened by enjoyment.

Charles Caleb "C. C." Colton (1780-1832) English cleric, writer, aphorist
Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Vol. 1, § 246 (1820)
    (Source)
 
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HARRIS: I call it performance art, but my friend Ariel calls it wasting time. History will decide.

Steve Martin (b. 1945) American comedian, actor, writer, producer, musician
L. A. Story (1991)
    (Source)
 
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The one thing that unifies men in a given age is not their individual philosophies but the dominant problem that these philosophies are designed to solve.

jacques barzun
Jacques Barzun (1907-2012) French-American historian, educator, polymath
Romanticism and the Modern Ego, ch. 1 (1943)
    (Source)
 
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Cities are an immense laboratory of trial and error, failure and success, in city building and city design.

Jane Jacobs
Jane Jacobs (1916-2006) American-Canadian journalist, author, urban theorist, activist
The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Introduction (1961)
    (Source)
 
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The whole wide world is a cathedral;
I stand inside, the air is calm,
And from afar at times there reaches
My ear the echo of a psalm.

[Как будто внутренность собора —
Простор земли, и чрез окно
Далекий отголосок хора
Мне слышать иногда дано.]

Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) Russian poet, novelist, and literary translator
“When It Clears Up [Когда разгуляется],” st. 6, Poems (1958) [tr. Lydia Pasternak Slater (1959)]
    (Source)
 
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A bibulous poet downed
his every glass in one;
so warned him his companion
“Stop — that’s enough, son.”
About to lose his balance
He said, “I know my stuff.
It’s one thing to drink too much,
but one never drinks enough.”

[Ein trunkner Dichter leerte
Sein Glaß auf jeden Zug;
Ihn Warnte sein Gefährte:
Hör’ auf! du hast genug.
Bereit vom Stuhl zu sinken,
Sprach der: Du bist nicht klug;
Zu viel kann man wohl trinken,
Doch nie trinkt man genug.]

Gotthold Lessing (1729-1781) German playwright, philosopher, dramaturg, writer
“Answer of a Drunken Poet [Antwort eines trunknen Dichters],” Lieder, Book 1 (1771) [tr. Conlin]
    (Source)

Conlin titled his version, "A Bibulous Poet."

Usually just the last two lines are quoted, e.g., "One can drink too much, but one never drinks enough" [ed. Bartlett (1964)] or "One may well drink too much, but yet one never drinks enough" [Source].

(Source (German)). Alternate translations:

A drunken poet emptied
His glass at every draft;
And him his friend admonished,
Cease now! Enough you've quaffed.
But from his chair a-sinking
He said: "You are not wise;
Too much one may be drinking
Yet never what satisfies."
[tr. Fischer (c. 1885), "Answer of a Drunken Poet"]

A drunken poet emptied
His glass with every gulp;
His companion warned him:
Cease! you have had enough.
Ready to fall off his stool,
He said: You are not wise!
Truly, one can drink too much,
Yet one can never drink enough.
[tr. Krebs (2012), "The Answer of a Drunken Poet"]

A drunken poet emptied
His glass with hefty swig;
His companion warned him:
Hey! enough of that, you pig.
Almost toppling from his stool,
He said: That's incorrect!
Ah yes, one can drink too much,
But enough? That I expect.
[tr. Bachlund, "A Drunken Poet"]

A drunken poet quickly drained
His glass, drawing this rebuff,
Being warned by his companion:
"Stop it! you've drunk enough."
Poised to topple out of his chair,
He cracked: "Clever, you're not!
One can always drink too much,
But enough can never be got.
[tr. Bachlund (2012), "Response (of a Drunken Poet)"]

 
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Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to become an author.

[C’est un métier que de faire un livre, comme de faire une pendule: il faut plus que de l’esprit pour être auteur.]

Jean de La Bruyere
Jean de La Bruyère (1645-1696) French essayist, moralist
The Characters [Les Caractères], ch. 1 “Of Works of the Mind [Des Ouvrages de l’Esprit],” § 3 (1.3) (1688) [tr. Stewart (1970)]
    (Source)

(Source (French)). Alternate translations:

To make a Book, is like making a Pendulum, a Man must have Experience, as well as Wit to succeed in it.
[Bullord ed. (1696)]

Tis as much a Trade to make a Book, as to make a Watch; there's something more than Wit requisite to make an Author.
[Curll ed. (1713)]

To make a Book, is no less a Trade than to make a Clock; something more than Wit is necessary to form an Author.
[Browne ed. (1752)]

To make a book is as much a trade as to make a clock; something more than intelligence is required to become an author.
[tr. Van Laun (1885)]

 
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GHOST, n. The outward and visible sign of an inward fear.

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) American writer and journalist
“Ghost,” The Cynic’s Word Book (1906)
    (Source)

A play on the traditional Christian (from St Augustine) definition of sacrament: "an outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual grace."

Included in The Devil's Dictionary (1911). Originally published in the "Devil's Dictionary" column in the San Francisco Wasp (1885-02-28).
 
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Whenever mortals fall in love,
if they should happen to meet with fine lovers,
there is no greater joy than this.

[ὅσοι γὰρ εἰς ἔρωτα πίπτουσιν βροτῶν,.
ἐσθλῶν ὅταν τύχωσι τῶν ἐρωμένων,.
οὐκ ἔσθ’ ὁποίας λείπεται τόδ’ ἡδονῆς.]

Euripides (485?-406? BC) Greek tragic dramatist
Andromeda [Ανδρομέδα], frag. 138 (TGF) (412 BC) [tr. Wright (2017)]
    (Source)

One of the first recorded uses of the phrase "fall in love [εἰς ἔρωτα πίπτειν]."

Nauck frag. 138, Barnes frag. 24, Musgrave frag. 12. (Source (Greek)). Alternate translations:

They who by love are caught, and fix their love
On virtuous objects; to complete their bliss,
Can need no new accession of delight.
[tr. Wodhall (1809)]

When it befalls poor mortal men to love,
Should they find worthy objects for their loving,
There is no fuller joy on earth to long for.
[Source]

 
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What is a Kiss? Alacke! at worst,
A single Dropp to quenche a Thirst,
Tho’ oft it prooves in happie Hour,
The first swete Dropp of one long Showre.

charles godfrey leland
Charles Godfrey Leland (1824-1903) American humorist, journalist, folklorist
“In the Old Time,” st. 4, The Music-Lesson of Confucius (1872)
    (Source)
 
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The old folk of our grandfathers’ young days sang a song bearing exactly the same burden; and the young folk of to-day will drone out precisely similar nonsense for the aggravation of the next generation. “Oh, give me back the good old days of fifty years ago,” has been the cry ever since Adam’s fifty-first birthday. Take up the literature of 1835, and you will find the poets and novelists asking for the same impossible gift as did the German Minnesingers long before them and the old Norse Saga writers long before that. And for the same thing sighed the early prophets and the philosophers of ancient Greece. From all accounts, the world has been getting worse and worse ever since it was created. All I can say is that it must have been a remarkably delightful place when it was first opened to the public, for it is very pleasant even now if you only keep as much as possible in the sunshine and take the rain good-temperedly.

Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927) English writer, humorist [Jerome Klapka Jerome]
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, “On Memory” (1886)
    (Source)

First published in Home Chimes (1885-09-26).
 
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ALL WITCHES: Fair is foul, and foul is fair;
Hover through the fog and filthy air.

Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Macbeth, Act 1, sc. 1, l. 12ff (1.1.12-13) (1606)
    (Source)
 
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We should be more ashamed to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them.
 
[Il est plus honteux de se défier de ses amis que d’en être trompé.]

François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) French epigrammatist, memoirist, noble
Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales [Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims], ¶84 (1665-1678) [tr. Heard (1917)]
    (Source)

First appeared in the second (1666) edition. Compare to Maxim 86, also from that edition: "Our distrust justifies the deception of others [Notre défiance justifie la tromperie d’autrui.]"

(Source (French)). Alternate translations:

It is much less for a Man's Honour to distrust his Friends, than to be deceived by them.
[tr. Stanhope (1694), ¶85]

It is more dishonourable to distrust a friend, than to be deceived by him.
[pub. Donaldson (1783), ¶171; ed. Lepoittevin-Lacroix (1797), ¶81; ed. Carvill (1835), ¶151]

It is more disgraceful to distrust; one's friends than to be deceived by them.
[ed. Gowens (1851), ¶87]

It is more disgraceful to distrust than to be deceived by our friends.
[tr. Bund/Friswell (1871), ¶84]

It is more disgraceful to mistrust one's friends than to be the victim of their treachery.
[tr. Stevens (1939), ¶84]

It is more shameful to distrust one's friends than to be deceived by them.
[tr. FitzGibbon (1957), ¶84; tr. Tancock (1959), ¶84]

It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them.
[tr. Kronenberger (1959), ¶84; tr. Whichello (2016), ¶84]

 
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Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion,
Instead of Truth they use Equivocation,
And eke it out with mental Reservation,
Which to good Men is an Abomination.

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher, aphorist
Poor Richard (1736 ed.)
    (Source)
 
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Housekeeping ain’t no joke.

Louisa May Alcott
Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) American writer
Little Women, Part 1, ch. 11 (1868)
    (Source)

Labeled as a saying of the family maid and cook, Hannah. The girls recognize its truth as they take over the housekeeping for the "ailing" Mrs. Marsh.
 
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The challenge of manners is not so much to be nice to someone whose favor and/or person you covet (although more people need to be reminded of that necessity than one would suppose) as to be exposed to the bad manners of others without imitating them.

Judith Martin (b. 1938) American author, journalist, etiquette expert [a.k.a. Miss Manners]
“Miss Manners,” syndicated column (1987-11-01)
    (Source)

Collected in Miss Manners' Guide for the Turn-of-the-Millennium, Part 1 "Revised Conventions," "Correcting Others" (1989).
 
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Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied.

Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973) American writer
What America Means to Me, ch. 10 (1942)
    (Source)

Critiquing lack of American policy in Asia, not just to defeat Japan, but to bring freedom to the people of China and India.
 
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He is not poore that hath little, but he that desireth much.

George Herbert (1593-1633) Welsh priest, orator, poet.
Jacula Prudentum, or Outlandish Proverbs, Sentences, &c. (compiler), # 309 (1640 ed.)
    (Source)
 
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Fate always wins. Most of the gods throw dice but Fate plays chess, and you don’t find out until too late that he’s been using two queens all along.

Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Interesting Times (1994)
    (Source)
 
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What makes old age so sad is, not that our joys, but that our hopes then cease.

[Das Alter ist nicht trübe weil darin unsere Freuden, sondern weil unsere Hoffnungen aufhören.]

Jean Paul Richter (1763-1825) German writer, art historian, philosopher, littérateur [Johann Paul Friedrich Richter; pseud. Jean Paul]
Titan, Jubilee 6, cycle 34, “Fifth” (1803) [tr. Brooks (1863)]
    (Source)
 
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There are depths in man that go the length of lowest Hell, as there are heights that reach highest Heaven; — for are not both Heaven and Hell made out of him, made by him, everlasting Miracle and Mystery as he is?

Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Scottish essayist and historian
The French Revolution: A History, Part 3, Book 1, ch. 4 (3.1.4) (1837)
    (Source)

Regarding the events of 2 September 1792, and the Commune-ordered massacres of prisoners in the Paris prisons.

This passage was popularized in a slightly paraphrased form in Tryon Edwards, ed., A Dictionary of Thoughts (1891):

There are depths in man that go to the lowest hell, and heights that reach the highest heaven, for are not both heaven and hell made out of him, everlasting miracle and mystery that he is.

The Edwards version was, in turn, quoted by Martin Luther King, Jr. in his Detroit sermon "The Christian Doctrine of Man" (1958-02-12).
 
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For little boys are rancorous
When robbed of any myth,
And spiteful and cantankerous
To all their kin and kith.
But little girls can draw conclusions
And profit from their lost illusions.

Phyllis McGinley (1905-1978) American author, poet
“What Every Woman Knows,” Times Three (1960)
    (Source)

On when kids figure out that Santa Claus is not real.
 
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Advice iz like kastor-ile, eazy enuff to give, but dredful uneazy tew take.

[Advice is like castor oil, easy enough to give, but dreadfully uneasy to take.]

Josh Billings (1818-1885) American humorist, aphorist [pseud. of Henry Wheeler Shaw]
Everybody’s Friend, Or; Josh Billing’s Encyclopedia and Proverbial Philosophy of Wit and Humor, ch. 148 “Affurisms: Ink Brats” (1874)
    (Source)

The phrase also shows up twice in Wit and Wisdom of Josh Billings (1913) [ed. H. Montague] (which, being published in England, did away with the misspellings):

Advice is like castor oil -- easy enough to give but dreadful hard to take.
["Advice"]

Advice is like castor oil -- awful easy to give but mighty hard to take.
["How to Select a Husband"]

 
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All human accomplishment has the same origin, identically. Imagination is a force of nature. Is this not enough to make a person full of ecstasy? Imagination, imagination, imagination. It converts to actual. It sustains, it alters, it redeems!

Saul Bellow (1915-2005) Canadian-American writer
Henderson the Rain King, ch. 18 [King Dahfu] (1959)
    (Source)
 
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Better pass a Danger once, than be always in Fear.

Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician, preacher, aphorist, writer
Introductio ad Prudentiam, Vol. 1, # 114 (1725)
    (Source)
 
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Parents lend children their experience and a vicarious memory; children endow their parents with a vicarious immortality.

George Santayana (1863-1952) Spanish-American poet and philosopher [Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruíz de Santayana y Borrás]
The Life of Reason, “Reason in Society,” ch. 2 “The Family” (1905-06)
    (Source)
 
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How shallow, puny, and imperfect are efforts to sound the depths in the nature of things. In philosophical discussion, the merest hint of dogmatic certainty as to finality of statement is an exhibition of folly.

Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) English mathematician and philosopher
Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, Preface (1929)
    (Source)

The book is a collection of his Gifford Lectures, University of Edinburgh (1927-1928).
 
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The world would be much better off if the pains taken to analyze the subtlest moral laws were given to the practice of the simplest.

[Es stände besser um die Welt, wenn die Mühe, die man sich gibt, die subtilsten Moralgesetze auszuklüglen, zur Ausübung der einfachsten angewendet würde.]

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830-1916) Austrian writer
Aphorisms [Aphorismen], No. 104 (1880) [tr. Wister (1883)]
    (Source)

(Source (German)). Alternate translation:

The world would be in better shape if people would take the same pains in the practice of the simplest moral laws as they exert in intellectualizing over the most subtle moral questions.
[tr. Scrase/Mieder (1994)]

 
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It is this glamour of the past, I suppose, that makes old folk talk so much nonsense about the days when they were young. The world appears to have been a very superior sort of place then, and things were more like what they ought to be. Boys were boys then, and girls were very different. Also winters were something like winters, and summers not at all the wretched things we get put off with nowadays. As for the wonderful deeds people did in those times and the extraordinary events that happened, it takes three strong men to believe half of them.

Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927) English writer, humorist [Jerome Klapka Jerome]
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, “On Memory” (1886)
    (Source)

First published in Home Chimes (1885-09-26).
 
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Man comes to each age of his life as a novice.

[L’homme arrive novice à chaque âge de la vie.]

Nicolas Chamfort
Nicolas Chamfort (1741-1794) French writer, epigrammist (b. Nicolas-Sébastien Roch)
Products of Perfected Civilization [Produits de la Civilisation Perfectionnée], Part 2 “Characters and Anecdotes [Caractères et Anecdotes],” ch. 12 (1795) [tr. Merwin (1969)]
    (Source)

(Source (French)). Alternate translations:

Man arrives a novice at every age of life.
[ed. Mathews (1878)]

Man reaches each stage in his life as a novice.
[tr. Hutchinson (1902), "The Cynic's Breviary"]

A man begins every stage of his life as a novice.
[tr. Parmée (2003), ¶ 422]

 
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Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy wealthy and wise.

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher, aphorist
Poor Richard (1735 ed.)
    (Source)
 
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FIRST WITCH: When shall we three meet again?
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

SECOND WITCH: When the hurly-burly’s done,
When the battle’s lost and won.

THIRD WITCH: That will be ere the set of sun.

FIRST WITCH: Where’s the place?

SECOND WITCH: Upon the heath.

THIRD WITCH: There to meet with Macbeth.

Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Macbeth, Act 1, sc. 1, l. 1ff (1.1.1-8) (1606)
    (Source)
 
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It is not rude to turn off your telephone by switching it on to an answering machine, which is cheaper and less disruptive than ripping it out of the wall. Those who are offended because they cannot always get through when they seek, at their own convenience, to barge in on people are suffering from a rude expectation.

Judith Martin (b. 1938) American author, journalist, etiquette expert [a.k.a. Miss Manners]
“Miss Manners,” syndicated column (1985-07-10)
    (Source)

Collected in Miss Manners' Guide for the Turn-of-the-Millennium, Part 2 "Home Life," "Communications at Home" (1989).
 
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Few books can please us throughout life. For some we lose all liking as we grow in age, wisdom, or good sense.

[Peu de livres peuvent plaire toute la vie. Il y en a dont on se dégoûte avec le temps, la sagesse ou le bon sens.]

Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist, philosopher, essayist, poet
Pensées [Thoughts], ch. 23 “Des Qualités de l’Écrivain [Of the Qualities of Writers],” ¶ 178 (1850 ed.) [tr. Attwell (1896), ¶ 375]
    (Source)

(Source (French)). Alternate translations:

Few books give life-long pleasure. There are some for which, with the growth of time, wisdom, and good sense, we lose all taste.
[tr. Lyttelton (1899), ch. 22, ¶ 84]

 
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The Establishment is enlightened, tolerant, even well-meaning. It has never been exclusive, rather drawing in recruits from outside, as soon as they are ready to conform to its standards and become respectable. There is nothing more agreeable in this life than to make peace with the Establishment — and nothing more corrupting.

A. J. P. Taylor (1906-1990) British historian, journalist, broadcaster [Alan John Percivale Taylor]
“William Cobbett,” The New Statesman (1953-08-29)
    (Source)

Taylor is often credited with coining the term "the Establishment" (what Cobbett called "the Thing"). The article, reviewing a biography of Cobbett, was collected in Taylor's Englishmen and Others (1956).
 
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Of all creation’s bounty realized,
God’s greatest gift, the gift in which mankind
is most like Him, the gift by Him most prized,
is the freedom he bestowed upon the will.
All his intelligent creatures, and they alone,
were so endowed, and so endowed are still.

[Lo maggior don che Dio per sua larghezza
fesse creando, e a la sua bontate
più conformato, e quel ch’e’ più apprezza,
fu de la volontà la libertate;
di che le creature intelligenti,
e tutte e sole, fuore e son dotate.]

Dante Alighieri the poet
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) Italian poet
The Divine Comedy [Divina Commedia], Book 3 “Paradiso,” Canto 5, l. 19ff (5.19-24) [Beatrice] (1320) [tr. Ciardi (1970)]
    (Source)

(Source (Italian)). Alternate translations:

That gem above all price by wifdom giv'n.
The most distinguish'd boon of fav'ring Heav'n,
The Stamp of Godhead on the human breast,
By him most priz'd, is Liberty of Choice;
A gift by none beneath the ambient Skies
But happy rationals alone possest.
[tr. Boyd (1802), st. 5]

Supreme of gifts, which God creating gave
Of his free bounty, sign most evident
Of goodness, and in his account most priz’d,
Was liberty of will, the boon wherewith
All intellectual creatures, and them sole
He hath endow’d.
[tr. Cary (1814)]

The greatest gift that God, creating, gave
Of his great bounty, and his goodness cost,
And that which he appreciated the most,
Was human liberty and our free will;
With which the creatures of intelligence,
And they alone, were dowered as with sense.
[tr. Bannerman (1850)]

The greatest gift that in his largess God
Creating made, and unto his own goodness
Nearest conformed, and that which he doth prize
Most highly, is the freedom of the will,
Wherewith the creatures of intelligence
Both all and only were and are endowed.
[tr. Longfellow (1867)]

The greatest gift which God of His bounty made in creating, and the most conformed to His goodness, and that which He most values, was the freedom of the will, wherewith the creatures that have intelligence all, and they only, were and are endowed.
[tr. Butler (1885)]

The greatest gift which God's creating grace
Made in His largess, to His clemency
The most conformed, and prized as first in place
Was of the will the perfect liberty,
With which the creatures of intelligence
Were dowered, and are, and they alone.
[tr. Minchin (1885)]

The greatest gift which God in His largess bestowed in creating, and the most conformed unto His goodness and that which He esteems the most, was the freedom of the will, with which all the creatures of intelligence, and they alone, were and are endowed.
[tr. Norton (1892)]

The greatest gift God of his largess made at the creation, and the most conformed to his own excellence, and which he most prizeth,
was the will's liberty, wherewith creatures intelligent, both all and only, were and are endowed.
[tr. Wicksteed (1899)]

The greatest gift that God in His bounty made in creation, the most conformable to His goodness and the one He accounts the most precious, was the freedom of the will, with which the creatures with intelligence, all and only these, were and are endowed.
[tr. Sinclair (1939)]

Of all the gifts God in His bounty extreme
Made when creating, most conformable
To His own goodness, and in His esteem
Most precious, was the liberty of the will,
With which creatures that are intelligent
Were all endowed, they only, and are so still.
[tr. Binyon (1943)]

The greatest gift of God’s largesse, when He
Created all, most prized by Him, and best,
As most akin to His own quality,
Was the will's freedom, crown of all the rest,
Whereof all creatures made intelligent,
They all, they only, were and are possessed.
[tr. Sayers/Reynolds (1962)]

The greatest gift which God in His bounty
bestowed in creating, and to His own goodness
the most conformed, and that which He prizes the most,
was of the will the freedom,
with which the creatures that have intelligence,
they all and they alone, were and are endowed.
[tr. Singleton (1975)]

The greatest gift which God in his open-handedness
Gave in creation, and the gift which most conformed
To his own excellence, and which he most values,
Was that of freedom of the will,
With which creatures created intelligent,
Each and all of them, were and are endowed.
[tr. Sisson (1981)]

The greatest gift the magnanimity
of God, as He created, gave, the gift
most suited to His goodness, gift that He
most prizes, was the freedom of the will;
those beings that have intellect -- all these
and none but these -- received and do receive this gift.
[tr. Mandelbaum (1984)]

The greatest gift that our bounteous Lord
bestowed as the Creator, in creating,
the gift He cherishes the most, the one
most like Himself, was freedom of the will,
All creatures with intelligence, and they
alone, were so endowed both then and now.
[tr. Musa (1984)]

The greatest gift that ever in his bountifulness God gave in creating, and the most conformed to his goodness, the one that is most prized,
was the freedom of the will, with which the creatures with intelligence, all of them and only they, were and are endowed.
[tr. Durling (2011)]

The greatest gift that God made at the Creation, out of his munificence, the one that most fitted his supreme goodness, and which he values most, is Free Will, with which intelligent creatures, all and sundry, were, and are, endowed.
[tr. Kline (2002)]

The greatest gift that God, in spacious deed,
made, all-creating -- and most nearly formed
to His liberality, most prized by Him --
was liberty in actions of the will,
with which all creatures of intelligence --
and they alone -- both were and are endowed.
[tr. Kirkpatrick (2007)]

The greatest gift that God in His largesse
gave to creation, the most attuned
to His goodness and that He accounts most dear,
was the freedom of the will:
all creatures possessed of intellect,
all of them and they alone, were and are so endowed.
[tr. Hollander/Hollander (2007)]

The greatest gift that God, in infinite bounty,
Bestowed on His creation, and the quality
Most like His goodness, as well as what He prices,
Was freedom of will, granted only to creatures
Of intelligence -- exclusively for them,
No others thus endowed.
[tr. Raffel (2010)]

 
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All is not gold that glisters.

George Herbert (1593-1633) Welsh priest, orator, poet.
Jacula Prudentum, or Outlandish Proverbs, Sentences, &c. (compiler), # 306 (1640 ed.)
    (Source)

Usually modernized as "All that glitters is not gold."

See Shakespeare, Tolkien.
 
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I don’t know that it’s an issue for anybody but me, but it’s true that nothing I did where the only reason for doing it was the money was ever worth it, except as bitter experience. Usually I didn’t wind up getting the money, either. The things I did because I was excited, and wanted to see them exist in reality have never let me down, and I’ve never regretted the time I spent on any of them.

Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British author, screenwriter, fabulist
Speech (2012-05-17), Commencement, University of the Arts, Philadelphia [06:33]
    (Source)
 
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Much less evil would be done on earth if evil could not be done in the name of good.

[Es würde sehr wenig Böses auf Erden getan werden, wenn das Böse niemals im Namen des Guten getan werden könnte.]

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830-1916) Austrian writer
Aphorisms [Aphorismen], No. 97 (1880) [tr. Scrase/Mieder (1994)]
    (Source)

(Source (German)). Alternate translation:

But little evil would be done in the world if evil could never be done in the name of good.
[tr. Wister (1883)]

 
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The Ten Commandments that, as a teacher, I should wish to promulgate, might be set forth as follows:

  1. Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.
  2. Do not think it worth while to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
  3. Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.
  4. When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavour to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
  5. Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.
  6. Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.
  7. Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
  8. Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent that in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
  9. Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
  10. Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
“The Best Answer to Fanaticism: Liberalism,” New York Times Magazine (1951-12-16)
    (Source)

Sometimes referred to as "The Liberal Decalogue." Later printed in The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, Vol. 3 (1969).
 
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Yet it is not on account of food or clothing that wealth is sought by most. Some device has been concocted by the devil, suggesting innumerable spending opportunities to the wealthy, so that they pursue unnecessary and worthless things as if they were indispensable, and no amount is sufficient for the expenditures they contrive.

[Ἀλλ’ οὐ γὰρ ἱματίων ἕνεκεν οὐδὲ τροφῶν ὁ πλοῦτός ἐστι τοῖς πολλοῖς περισπούδαστος, ἀλλά τις ἐπινενόηται μεθοδεία τῷ διαβόλῳ, μυρίας τοῖς πλουσίοις δαπάνης ἀφορμὰς ὑποβάλλουσα, ὥστε τὰ περιττὰ καὶ ἄχρηστα ὡς ἀναγκαῖα σπου δάζεσθαι, μηδὲν δὲ αὐτοῖς ἐξαρκεῖν πρὸς τὴν τῶν ἀναλωμάτων ἐπίνοιαν.]

basil the great
Basil of Caesarea (AD 330-378) Christian bishop, theologian, monasticist, Doctor of the Church [Saint Basil the Great, Ἅγιος Βασίλειος ὁ Μέγας]
“To the Rich [Ὁμιλία πρὸς τοὺς πλουτούντας],” sermon (c. 368) [tr. Schroeder (2009)]
    (Source)
 
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We do not make people humble and meek when we show them their guilt and cause them to be ashamed of themselves. We are more likely to stir their arrogance and rouse in them a reckless aggressiveness. Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown the voice of guilt within us. There is a guilty conscience behind every brazen word and act and behind every manifestation of self-righteousness.

Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, Part 3, ch. 14, § 69 (1951)
    (Source)
 
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We are to have a tiny party here tonight. I hate tiny parties, they force one into constant exertion.

Jane Austen
Jane Austen (1775-1817) English author
Letter (1801-05-21) to Cassandra Austen
    (Source)
 
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A fine is a bribe paid by a rich man to escape the lawful penalty of his crime. In China such bribes are paid to the judge personally. In America they are paid to him as agent for the public. But it makes no difference to the men who pay them, nor to the men who can’t pay them.

H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) American writer and journalist [Henry Lewis Mencken]
A Little Book in C Major, ch. 4, § 7 (1916)
    (Source)

Variants:

FINE. A bribe paid by a rich man to escape the lawful penalty of his crime. In China such bribes are paid to the judge personally; in America they are paid to him as agent for the public. But it makes no difference to the men who pay them -- nor to the men who can't pay them.
[A Book of Burlesques, "The Jazz Webster" (1924)]

Fine -- A bribe paid by a rich man to escape the lawful penalty of his crime. In China such bribes are paid to the judge personally; in America they are paid to him as agent for the public. But it makes no difference to the men who pay them -- nor to the men who can’t pay them.
[Chrestomathy, ch. 30 "Sententiae" (1949)]

 
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The neurotic longs to touch bottom, so at least he won’t have that to worry about anymore.

Mignon McLaughlin (1913-1983) American journalist and author
The Neurotic’s Notebook, ch. 10 (1963)
    (Source)
 
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Polygamy may well be held in dread,
Not only as a sin, but as a bore:
Most wise men, with one moderate woman wed,
Will scarcely find philosophy for more.

Lord Byron
George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) English poet
Don Juan, Canto 6, st. 12 (1823)
    (Source)
 
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Death is the liberator of him whom freedom cannot release, the physician of him whom medicine cannot cure, and the comforter of him whom time cannot console.

Charles Caleb "C. C." Colton (1780-1832) English cleric, writer, aphorist
Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Vol. 2, § 200 (1822)
    (Source)
 
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GENEALOGY, n. An account of one’s descent from an ancestor who did not particularly care to trace his own.

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) American writer and journalist
“Genealogy,” The Cynic’s Word Book (1906)
    (Source)

Included in The Devil's Dictionary (1911). Originally published in the "Devil's Dictionary" column in the San Francisco Wasp (1885-02-21).
 
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Yes, it is the brightness, not the darkness, that we see when we look back. The sunshine casts no shadows on the past. The road that we have traversed stretches very fair behind us. We see not the sharp stones. We dwell but on the roses by the wayside, and the strong briers that stung us are, to our distant eyes, but gentle tendrils waving in the wind. God be thanked that it is so — ­that the ever-lengthening chain of memory has only pleasant links, and that the bitterness and sorrow of to-day are smiled at on the morrow.

Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927) English writer, humorist [Jerome Klapka Jerome]
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, “On Memory” (1886)
    (Source)

First published in Home Chimes (1885-09-26).
 
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BALTHASAR: For slander lives upon succession,
Forever housèd where it gets possession.

Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Comedy of Errors, Act 3, sc. 1, l. 154ff (3.1.154-155) (1594)
    (Source)

To Antipholus of Ephesus.
 
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Library books were, I suddenly realized, promiscuous, ready to lie in the arms of anyone who asked. Not like bookstore books, which married their purchasers, or were brokered for marriages to others.

elizabeth mccracken
Elizabeth McCracken (b. 1966) American author
The Giant’s House [Peggy] (1997)
    (Source)
 
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The truly conscientious will not limit themselves to helping with the more exciting parts of one’s life. They are also scrupulous about offering helpful suggestions regarding such mundane matters as your household arrangements, work habits, mannerisms, and use of the language. There is nothing like a good friend to help you out when you are not in trouble.

Judith Martin (b. 1938) American author, journalist, etiquette expert [a.k.a. Miss Manners]
Miss Manners’ Guide for the Turn-of-the-Millennium, Part 1 “Revised Conventions,” “Advice” (1989)
    (Source)
 
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That is not good language which all understand not.

George Herbert (1593-1633) Welsh priest, orator, poet.
Jacula Prudentum, or Outlandish Proverbs, Sentences, &c. (compiler), # 302 (1640 ed.)
    (Source)
 
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Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Pudd’nhead Wilson, ch. 5, Epigraph (1894)
    (Source)
 
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As far as your self-control goes, as far goes your freedom.

[So weit Deine Selbstbeherrschung geht, so weit geht Deine Freiheit.]

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830-1916) Austrian writer
Aphorisms [Aphorismen], No. 534 (1880)
    (Source)

(Source (German)). Alternate translation:

Freedom stretches as far as your self-control.
[tr. Scrase/Mieder (1994)]

 
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Fear makes evry thing and evry body masters over us; it iz the wust slavery thare iz.

[Fear makes everything and everybody masters over us; it is the worst slavery there is.]

Josh Billings (1818-1885) American humorist, aphorist [pseud. of Henry Wheeler Shaw]
Everybody’s Friend, Or; Josh Billing’s Encyclopedia and Proverbial Philosophy of Wit and Humor, ch. 148 “Affurisms: Ink Brats” (1874)
    (Source)
 
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Some of my youthful readers are developing wonderful imaginations. This pleases me. Imagination has brought mankind through the Dark Ages to its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity. Imagination has given us the steam engine, the telephone, the talking-machine, and the automobile, for these things had to be dreamed of before they became realities. So I believe that dreams — day dreams, you know, with your eyes wide open and your brain machinery whizzing — are likely to lead to the betterment of the world. The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to create, to invent, and therefore to foster civilization. A prominent educator tells me that fairy tales are of untold value in developing imagination in the young. I believe it.

L Frank Baum
L. Frank Baum (1856-1919) American author [Lyman Frank Baum]
The Lost Princess of Oz, Introduction (1917)
    (Source)
 
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Be neither foolishly Bashful, nor nauseously Confident.

Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician, preacher, aphorist, writer
Introductio ad Prudentiam, Vol. 1, # 104 (1725)
    (Source)
 
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I believe I drank too much wine last night at Hurstbourne; I know not how else to account for the shaking of my hand today. You will kindly make allowance therefore for any indistinctness of writing, by attributing it to this venial error.

Jane Austen
Jane Austen (1775-1817) English author
Letter (1800-11-20) to Cassandra Austen
    (Source)
 
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EPIGRAM. A platitude with vine-leaves in its hair.

H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) American writer and journalist [Henry Lewis Mencken]
A Book of Burlesques, “The Jazz Webster” (1924)
    (Source)
 
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The poor have the same basic pleasures of the rich, and the rich will always resent it.

Mignon McLaughlin (1913-1983) American journalist and author
The Neurotic’s Notebook, ch. 1 (1963)
    (Source)
 
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But I digress: of all appeals, — although
I grant the power of pathos, and of gold,
Of beauty, flattery, threats, a shilling, — no
Method’s more sure at moments to take hold
Of the best feelings of mankind, which grow
More tender, as we every day behold,
Than that all-softening, overpowering knell,
The tocsin of the soul — the dinner-bell.

Lord Byron
George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) English poet
Don Juan, Canto 5, st. 49 (1821)
    (Source)
 
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Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books.

Charles Caleb "C. C." Colton (1780-1832) English cleric, writer, aphorist
(Attributed)

This is widely attributed to Colton (e.g., 1853, 1856, 1858), but I cannot find it in a primary source.
 
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PERSEUS: O Love, our lord, of gods and men the king.

[σὺ δ’ ὦ θεῶν τύραννε κἀνθρώπων ῎Ερως]

Euripides (485?-406? BC) Greek tragic dramatist
Andromeda [Ανδρομέδα], frag. 136 (TGF) (412 BC)
    (Source)

Lucian, in How to Write History, says the people of Abdera, Thrace, were so affected by a mid-summer performance of this play that they stumbled about, bemusedly repeating the the first line, until restored to their senses by a severe winter (see 1, 2, 3).

Nauck frag. 136, Barnes Addenda p519, Musgrave frag. 17. (Source (Greek)). Alternate translations:

Tyrant of Gods, and men, O Love.
[tr. Wodhall (1809)]

You, Eros, tyrant over gods and men.
[tr. Collard/Cropp (2008)]

Lust, you tyrant of gods and men!
[tr. @sentantiq (2015)]

 
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Even so, one step from my grave,
I believe that cruelty, spite,
The powers of darkness will in time
Be crushed by the spirit of light.

[Но и так, почти у гроба,
Верю я, придет пора —
Силу подлости и злобы
Одолеет дух добра.]

Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) Russian poet, novelist, and literary translator
“Nobel Prize [Нобелевская Премия]” st. 4 (1959) [tr. Stallworthy/France (1982)]
    (Source)

On his persecution for winning the 1958 Nobel Prize for Literature for Doctor Zhivago, which had been condemned by the Communist Party and the Soviet government. The poem was not published until Selected Poems (1983).

This upbeat ending is how the poem officially ends. Two more, darker, stanzas were attached to the manuscript by Pasternak, but it is unclear if they were meant to be added (and, if so, where), or if Pasternak ever wanted the poem published.

(Source (Russian)). Alternate translations:

Even now, at the edge of the tomb,
I believe in the virtuous fate, --
And the spirit of goodness will soon
overcome all the malice and hate.
[tr. Kneller]

But even as my grave awaits,
the time will come. I've believed --
The forces of meanness and hate
will be vanquished by the spirit of good.
[tr. Mager]

Yet, as I approach my passing,
I believe the day is near,
When the heart of good surpasses
rage and baseness -- even here.
[tr. Moreton]

Even in my dying hour
I believe it still stronger:
Malice will be overpowered
By the spirit of Good Will.
[tr. Astrakhan]

 
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Arguments are like fire-arms, which a man may keep at home but should not carry about with him.

Samuel Butler (1835-1902) English novelist, satirist, scholar
Note-books, ch. 10 “The Position of a Homo Unius Libri,” “The Art of Propagating Opinion” [ed. Jones (1912)]
    (Source)
 
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§ 94. But why should every individual not have been present more than once in this world?
§ 95. Is this hypothesis so ridiculous just because it is the oldest one? Because the human understanding hit up on it at once, before it was distracted and weakened by the sophistry of the schools?
§ 98. Why should I not come back as often as I am able to acquire new knowledge and new accomplishments? Do I take away so much on one occasion that it may not be worth the trouble coming back?
§ 100. Or am I not to return because too much time would be lost in so doing? — Lost? — And what exactly do I have to lose? Is not the whole of eternity mine?

[§ 94. Aber warum könnte jeder einzelne Mensch auch nicht mehr als einmal auf dieser Welt vorhanden gewesen seyn?
§ 95. Ist diese Hypothese darum so lächerlich, weil sie die älteste ist? weil der menschliche Verstand, ehe ihn die Sophisterey der Schule zerstreut und geschwächt hatte, sogleich darauf verfiel?
§ 98. Warum sollte ich nicht so oft wiederkommen, als ich neue Kenntnisse, neue Fertigkeiten zu erlangen geschickt bin? Bringe ich auf Einmal so viel weg, daß es der Mühe wieder zu kommen etwa nicht lohnet?
§ 100. Oder, weil so zu viel Zeit für mich verloren gehen würde?—Verloren? —Und was habe ich denn zu versäumen? Ist nicht die ganze Ewigkeit mein?]

Gotthold Lessing (1729-1781) German playwright, philosopher, dramaturg, writer
The Education of the Human Race [Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts] (1780)
    (Source)

(Source (German)). Alternate translations:

§ 94. But why should not every individual man have existed more than once upon this World?
§ 95. Is this hypothesis so laughable merely because it is the oldest? Because the human understanding, before the sophistries of the Schools had dissipated and debilitated it, lighted upon it at once?
§ 98. Why should I not come back as often as I am capable of acquiring fresh knowledge, fresh expertness? Do I bring away so much from once, that there is nothing to repay the trouble of coming back?
§ 100. Or is it a reason against the hypothesis that so much time would have been lost to me? Lost? -- And how much then should I miss? -- Is not a whole Eternity mine?
[tr. Robertson (1862)]

§ 94. But why could not each individual man Have been existent on this earth more than once?
§ 95. Is this hypothesis therefore so absurd because it is the oldest, because the human understanding, ere enfeebled and scattered by sophistry, immediately hit upon it?
§ 98. Why may I not return as often as I am fit to acquire new knowledge, new skill? Do I bring away so much at once that there is not wherewith to recompense the burden of return?
§ 100. Or is it because too much time would thus for me be lost? Lost? And what have I to lose? Is not mine a whole eternity?
[tr. Haney (1908)]

 
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We should keep silent about those in power; to speak well of them almost implies flattery; to speak ill of them while they are alive is dangerous, and when they are dead is cowardly.

[L’on doit se taire sur les puissants: il y a presque toujours de la flatterie à en dire du bien; il y a du péril à en dire du mal pendant qu’ils vivent, et de la lâcheté quand ils sont morts.]

Jean de La Bruyere
Jean de La Bruyère (1645-1696) French essayist, moralist
The Characters [Les Caractères], ch. 9 “Of the Great [Des Grands],” § 56 (9.56) (1688) [tr. Stewart (1970)]
    (Source)

(Source (French)). Alternate translations:

The less we talk of the powerful, the better; what we say good of them, is often flattery: 'Tis dangerous to speak ill of 'em while they live, and villainous when they are dead.
[Bullord ed. (1696)]

The less we talk of the Great and Powerful, the better; what good we say of them is often Flattery 'Tis dangerous to speak ill of them while they are alive, and villainous when dead.
[Curll ed. (1713)]

The less we talk of the Great and Powerful, the better; what good we say of them is often Flattery: It is dangerous to speak of of them while living, it is base to insult over them when dead.
[Browne ed. (1752)]

The less we talk of the great and powerful the better; if we say any good of them, it is often almost flattery; it is dangerous to speak ill of them whilst they are alive, and cowardly when they are dead.
[tr. Van Laun (1885)]

 
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FUTURE, n. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true, and our happiness is assured.

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) American writer and journalist
“Future,” The Cynic’s Word Book (1906)
    (Source)

Included in The Devil's Dictionary (1911). Originally published in the "Devil's Dictionary" column in the San Francisco Wasp (1885-02-21).
 
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Study has always been for me the sovereign remedy against life’s unpleasantness, since I have never experienced any sorrow that an hour’s reading did not eliminate.

[L’étude a été pour moi le souverain remède contre les dégoûts de la vie, n’ayant jamais eu de chagrin qu’une heure de lecture n’ait dissipé.]

Charles-Lewis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755) French political philosopher
Pensées [Thoughts], # 213 (1720-1755) [tr. Clark (2012)]
    (Source)

(Source (French)). Alternate translations:

Study has been my sovereign remedy against the worries of life. I have never had a care that an hour's reading could not dispel.
[Source (1826)]

Study is a sovereign remedy against the troubles of life; there is no vexation which an hour's reading cannot mitigate.
[E.g. (1877)]

Study has been to me a sovereign remedy against the vexations of life, having never had an annoyance that one hour's reading did not dissipate.
[E.g. (1905)]

Study has been my sovereign remedy against life's disappointment; I have never known any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve.
[ed. Guterman (1963)]

 
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Poverty wants some things, Luxury many things, Avarice all things.

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher, aphorist
Poor Richard (1735 ed.)
    (Source)
 
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Indeed, the labor of keeping house is labor in its most naked state, for labor is toil that never finishes, toil that has to be begun again the moment it is completed, toil that is destroyed and consumed by the life process.

Mary McCarthy (1912-1989) American author, critic, political activist
“The Vita Activa,” The New Yorker (1958-10)
    (Source)

A review of Hanna Arendt, The Human Condition (1958). Collected in On the Contrary: Articles of Belief, 1946–1961, Part 1 (1961).
 
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It is so hard for us little human beings to accept this deal that we get. It’s really crazy, isn’t it? We get to live, then we have to die. What we put into every moment is all we have.

Gilda Radner
Gilda Radner (1946-1989) American comedian
It’s Always Something, ch. 6 “Cancer” (1989)
    (Source)
 
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The idea that people can behave naturally, without resorting to an artificial code tacitly agreed upon by their society, is as silly as the idea that they can communicate by a spoken language without commonly accepted semantic and grammatical rules.

Judith Martin (b. 1938) American author, journalist, etiquette expert [a.k.a. Miss Manners]
Common Courtesy, “On Etiquette as Language, Weapon, Custom, and Craft” (1985)
    (Source)
 
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The best mirrour is an old friend.

George Herbert (1593-1633) Welsh priest, orator, poet.
Jacula Prudentum, or Outlandish Proverbs, Sentences, &c. (compiler), # 296 (1640 ed.)
    (Source)
 
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A little knowledge is said to be a dangerous thing, but it is not dangerous to the imagination. Knowledge is to the imagination what fuel is to flame. A little feeds it; a great deal extinguishes it.

Alfred Austin (1835-1913) English poet, UK Poet Laureate (1896-1913)
The Poet’s Diary, ch. 5 (1904)
    (Source)

See Pope.
 
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I have always believed that the key to a happy marriage was the ability to say with a straight face, “Why, I don’t know what you’re worrying about. I thought you were very funny last night, and I’m sure everybody else did, too.”

Judith Martin (b. 1938) American author, journalist, etiquette expert [a.k.a. Miss Manners]
Common Courtesy, “Those Who Would Change the Country’s Manners Encounter Citizen Resistance” (1985)
    (Source)
 
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I can recollect nothing more to say at present; perhaps breakfast may assist my ideas.
I was deceived — my breakfast supplied only two ideas — that the rolls were good and the butter bad.

Jane Austen
Jane Austen (1775-1817) English author
Letter (1799-06-19) to Cassandra Austen
    (Source)
 
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The neurotic doesn’t know how to cope with his emotional bills; some he keeps paying over and over, others he never pays at all.

Mignon McLaughlin (1913-1983) American journalist and author
The Neurotic’s Notebook, ch. 9 (1963)
    (Source)
 
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There’s not a sea the passenger e’er pukes in,
Turns up more dangerous breakers than the Euxine.

Lord Byron
George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) English poet
Don Juan, Canto 5, st. 5 (1821)
    (Source)

The Euxine is the Black Sea, from the Greek Pontos Euxeinos, which means (ironically) "the hospitable sea."
 
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It is a rich, full-bodied whistle,
cracked ice crunching in pails,
the night that numbs the leaf,
the duel of two nightingales,
the sweet pea that has run wild,
Creation’s tears in shoulder blades.

[Это – круто налившийся свист,
Это – щелканье сдавленных льдинок,
Это – ночь, леденящая лист,
Это – двух соловьев поединок.
Это – сладкий заглохший горох,
Это – слезы вселенной в лопатках.]

Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) Russian poet, novelist, and literary translator
“Definition of Poetry [Определение поэзии],” ll. 1-6, My Sister — Life [сестра моя – жизнь] (1922)
    (Source)

This is the translation, source unknown, given in Pasternak's obituary, "Farewell in a Poet's Land," Life Magazine (1960-06-13), and frequently quoted from there.

Alternate translations:

It's a tightly filled whistle,
it's the squeaking of jostled ice,
it's night, frosting the leaves,
it's two nightingales dueling.
It's the soundlessness of sweetpeas,
the tears of the universe in a pod.
[tr. Rudman/Boychuk (1983)]

It's a whistle that howls in the veins,
It's the crackle of ice under pressure,
It's the leaf-chilling night in the rain,
It's two nightingales dueling together.
It's the sweet pea all choked in the fields,
It's the universe weeping in pea pods.
[tr. Falen (2012)]

It’s a whistle, acutely full,
It’s a crackle of squeezed ice,
It’s night, freezing a leaf,
It’s two nightingales in a duel.
It’s the sweet grown-wildness of peas,
It’s tears of the universe in pods.
[tr. Livingstone (2015)]

It's a whistle blown ripe in a trice,
It's the cracking of ice in a gale,
It's a night that turns green leaves to ice,
It's a duel of two nightingales.
It is sweet-peas run gloriously wild,
It's the world's twinkling tears in the pod.
[Source]

 
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We moderns do not believe in demigods, but our smallest hero we expect to feel and act as a demigod.

[Wir Neuern glauben keine Halbgötter, aber der geringste Held soll bei uns wie ein Halbgott empfinden, und handeln.]

Gotthold Lessing (1729-1781) German playwright, philosopher, dramaturg, writer
Laocoön, or the Limitations of Painting and Poetry [Laokoön oder Über die Grenzen der Malerei und Poesie], ch. 4 (1767) [tr. Phillimore (1874)]
    (Source)

(Source (German)). Alternate translation:

We moderns are no believers in demi-gods, yet the least important hero among us is expected to feel and act like one.
[tr. Ross (1836)]

 
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Man never gives up his desire for gain and aggrandizement; as death draws near, a prey to bile, with withered face and palsied legs, he will speak of my fortune, my situation.
 
[L’on ne se rend point sur le désir de posséder et de s’agrandir: la bile gagne, et la mort approche, qu’avec un visage flétri, et des jambes déjà faibles, l’on dit: ma fortune, mon établissement.]

Jean de La Bruyere
Jean de La Bruyère (1645-1696) French essayist, moralist
The Characters [Les Caractères], ch. 6 “Of Gifts of Fortune [Des Biens de Fortune],” § 51 (6.51) (1688) [tr. Stewart (1970)]
    (Source)

(Source (French)). Alternate translations:

There is no end to a Man's desire of growing rich and great; when the Cough seizes him, when Death approaches, his Face shrivel'd, and his Legs weak, he cries, My Fortune, my Establishment.
[Bullord ed. (1696)]

There is no end to a Man's Desire of growing rich and great; the Cough seizes him, Death approaches, his Face is shrivel'd, and his Legs weak, yet he cries, My Fortune, my Preferment.
[Curll ed. (1713)]

There is no end of desiring Riches and Grandeur; before the Rattle seizes him, and Death approaches, though his Face be shriveled, and his Legs totter, yet he is ever talking of, my Fortune, my Preferment.
[Browne ed. (1752)]

All that a man wishes for is riches and grandeur; he falls very ill, and death draws near, and though his face be shrivelled and his legs totter, yet he is still talking of his fortune and his post.
[tr. Van Laun (1885)]

 
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FASHION, n. A deity whom the wise ridicule, yet the discreet obey.

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) American writer and journalist
“Fashion,” The Cynic’s Word Book (1906)
    (Source)

In The Devil's Dictionary (1911), it is defined as: "FASHION, n. A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey."

Originally published in the "Devil's Dictionary" column in the San Francisco Wasp (1884-06-28).
 
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Life altogether is but a crumbling ruin when we turn to look behind: a shattered column here, where a massive portal stood; the broken shaft of a window to mark my lady’s bower; and a moldering heap of blackened stones where the glowing flames once leaped, and over all the tinted lichen and the ivy clinging green.

Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927) English writer, humorist [Jerome Klapka Jerome]
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, “On Memory” (1886)
    (Source)

First published in Home Chimes (1885-09-26).
 
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ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: It is thyself, mine own self’s better part,
Mine eye’s clear eye, my dear heart’s dearer heart,
My food, my fortune, and my sweet hope’s aim,
My sole Earth’s heaven, and my heaven’s claim.

Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Comedy of Errors, Act 3, sc. 2, l. 66ff (3.2.66-69) (1594)
    (Source)

To Luciana.
 
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Few vices are more certain to prevent you from having lots of friends than possessing too many virtues.
 
[Il y a peu de vices qui empêchent un homme d’avoir beaucoup d’amis, autant que peuvent le faire de trop grandes qualités.]

Nicolas Chamfort
Nicolas Chamfort (1741-1794) French writer, epigrammist (b. Nicolas-Sébastien Roch)
Products of Perfected Civilization [Produits de la Civilisation Perfectionée], Part 1 “Maxims and Thoughts [Maximes et Pensées],” ch. 2, ¶ 110 (1795) [tr. Parmée (2003), ¶ 90]
    (Source)

(Source (French)). Alternate translations:

There are few vices that prevent a man from having many friends so much as his too high qualities prevent him.
[tr. Hutchinson (1902), "The Cynic's Breviary"]

There are few vices as likely to diminish the number of a man's friends, as can an excessive possession of fine qualities.
[tr. Mathers (1926), ¶ 90]

There are few vices that will so readily prevent a man from having many friends as will the possession of inordinate talents or virtues.
[tr. Merwin (1969)]

Few vices can prevent a man from having as many friends as too great of qualities can.
[tr. Siniscalchi (1994), ¶ 110]
 
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I said to God, “What are they doing?”
God said, “Making pitfalls into which their fellows may sink.”
I said to God, “Why do they do it?”
God said, “Because each thinks that when his brother falls he will rise.”

olive schreiner
Olive Schreiner (1855-1920) South African author, political activist, intellectual, freethinker
“The Sunlight Lay Across My Bed,” Dreams (1890)
    (Source)

Describing Hell.
 
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If we turn away from knowledge and truth, we will not succeed. If we believe the worst and suspect the best, we alone will suffer. If we deny our progress, if we are against all of it, if we tear down our accomplishments, we will fill the world with sorrow, and we will blemish our own name with shame.
But if we are courageous and farsighted and farseeing, if we have no fear of the truth, if we seek only after light, then we and our children and our children’s children shall know the greatness of this wonderful, beautiful land we call America.

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973) American politician, educator, US President (1963-69)
Speech (1964-09-28), Convocation, Brown University
    (Source)

On government support of higher education, research, and scholarship.
 
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Don’t spurn sweet love,
my child, and don’t you be neglectful
of the choir of love, or the dancing feet,
while life is still green, and your white-haired old age
is far away with all its moroseness. Now,
find the Campus again, and the squares,
soft whispers at night, at the hour agreed,
and the pleasing laugh that betrays her, the girl
who’s hiding away in the darkest corner,
and the pledge that’s retrieved from her arm,
or from a lightly resisting finger.
 
[Nec dulcis amores
sperne puer neque tu choreas,
donec virenti canities abest
morosa. Nunc et campus et areae
lenesque sub noctem susurri
conposita repetantur hora,
nunc et latentis proditor intumo
gratus puellae risus ab angulo
pignusque dereptum lacertis
aut digito male pertinaci.]

Horace (65-8 BC) Roman poet and satirist [Quintus Horacius Flaccus]
Odes [Carmina], Book 1, # 9, l. 15ff (1.9.15-24) (23 BC) [tr. Kline (2015)]
    (Source)

"To Thaliarchus." (Source (Latin)). Alternate translations:

Till testy Age gray Hairs shall snow
Upon thy Head, lose Mask, nor Show:
Soft whispers now delight
At a set hour by Night:
And Maids that gigle to discover
Where they are hidden to a Lover;
And Bracelets or some toy
Snatcht from the willing Coy.
[tr. Fanshaw (Brome (1666))]

Secure those golden early joys,
That youth unsoured with sorrow bears,
Ere withering time the taste destroys,
With sickness and unwieldy years.
For active sports, for pleasing rest,
This is the time to be possest;
The best is but in season best.
The appointed hour of promised bliss,
The pleasing whisper in the dark,
The half unwilling willing kiss,
The laugh that guides thee to the mark;
When the kind nymph would coyness feign,
And hides but to be found again;
These, these are joys the gods for youth ordain.
[tr. Dryden (c. 1685)]

Whilst Thou art green, and gay, and Young,
E're dull Age comes, and strength decays,
Let mirth, and humor, dance, and song
Be all the trouble of thy days.
The Court, the Mall, the Park, and Stage,
With eager thoughts of Love pursue;
Gay Evening whispers fit thy Age,
And be to Assignation true.
Now Love to hear the hiding Maid,
Whom Youth hath fir'd, and Beauty charms
By her own tittering laugh betray'd,
And forc'd into her Lover's Arms.
Go dally with thy wanton Miss,
And from the Willing seeming Coy,
Or force a Ring, or steal a Kiss;
For Age will come, and then farewell to joy.
[tr. Creech (1684)]

Sport in life's young spring,
Nor scorn sweet love, nor merry dance,
While years are green, while sullen eld
Is distant. Now the walk, the game,
The whisper'd talk at sunset held,
Each in its hour, prefer their claim.
Sweet too the laugh, whose feign'd alarm
The hiding-place of beauty tells,
The token, ravish'd from the arm
Or finger, that but ill rebels.
[tr. Conington (1872)]

Nor disdain, being a young fellow, pleasant loves, nor dances, as long as ill-natured hoariness keeps off from your blooming age. Now let both the Campus Martius and the public walks, and soft whispers at the approach of evening be repeated at the appointed hour: now, too, the delightful laugh, the betrayer of the lurking damsel from some secret corner, and the token ravished from her arms or fingers, pretendingly tenacious of it.
[tr. Smart/Buckley (1853)]

Let beauty's glance
Engage thee, and the merry dance,
Nor deem such pleasures vain!
Gloom is for age. Young hearts should glow
With fancies bright and free,
Should court the crowded walk, the show,
And at dim eve love's murmurs low
Beneath the trysting tree;
The laugh from the sly corner, where
Our girl is hiding fast,
The struggle for the lock of hair,
The half well pleased, half angry air,
The yielded kiss at last.
[tr. Martin (1864)]

Spurn not, thou, who art young, dulcet loves;
Spurn not, thou, choral dances and song
While the hoar-frost morose keeps aloof from thy verdure.
Thine the sports of the Campus, the gay public gardens;
Thine at twilight the words whispered low;
Each in turn has its own happy hour:
And thine the sweet laugh of the girl -- which betrays her
Hiding slyly within the dim nook of the threshold,
And the love-token snatched from the wrist,
Or the finger's not obstinate hold.
[tr. Bulwer-Lytton (1870)]

Youth must not spurn
Sweet loves, nor yet the dance forsake,
While grudging Age thy prime shall spare.
The Plain, the Squares, be now thy care,
And lounges, dear at nightfall, where
By concert love may whisper 'Hist!'
From inner nook a winsome smile
Betrays the girl that sculks the while,
And keepsakes, deftly filched by guile
From yielding finger, or from wrist.
[tr. Gladstone (1894)]

Nor, while thy vigour lasts, despise thou
Pleasures of love, nor the joys of dancing.
While the moroseness due to advancing age
Whitens not yet thy head, let the walks and park
And gentle whispers heard at nightfall
Each be repeated at fitting seasons.
Now, too, the pleasant laughter be heard, that tells
How lurking beauty hides in the corner-nook,
And token ravish'd from the arm, or
Finger, that daintily seems unwilling.
[tr. Phelps (1897)]

Being but yet a youth, contemn
Neither the sweets of love nor of the dance,
While from your bloom crabbed greyness holds aloof.
Now let the Campus and the city squares,
And whispers low, be sought at nightfall,
On the appointed hour of tryst;
And now the fascinating laugh from some recess
Secluded, the betrayer of a maid
In hiding, and the pledge snatched off
An arm or finger ill retaining it.
[tr. Garnsey (1907)]

Spurn not the dance,
Or in sweet loves to bask,
While surly age mars not thy morning's flower.
Seek now the athlete's training field or court;
See gentle lovers' whispered sport,
At nightfalls's trysted hour;
Seek the gay laught that from her ambush borne
Betrays the merry maiden huddled warm,
And forfeit from her hand or arm
Half given, half playful torn.
[tr. Marshall (1908)]

Nor in thy youth neglect sweet love nor dances, whilst life is still in its bloom and crabbed age is far away! Now let the Campus be sought and the squares, with low whispers at the trysting-hour as night draws on, and the merry tell-tale laugh of maiden hiding in farthest comer, and the forfeit snatched from her arm or finger that but feigns resistance.
[tr. Bennett (Loeb) (1912)]

Scorn not, while still
A boy, sweet loves; scorn not the dance.
Life in its Spring, and crabbed eld
Far off -- that is the time; then hey
For Park, Square, whispered concerts held
At a set hour at close of day:
For the sweet laugh whose soft alarm
Tells in what nook the maid lies hid:
For the love-token snatched from arm,
Of fingers that but half-forbid.
[tr. Mills (1924)]

Now that you're young, and peevish
Grey hairs are still far distant, attend to the
Dance-floor, the heart's sweet business; for now is the
Right time for midnight assignations,
whispers and murmurs in Rome's piazzas
And fields, and soft, low laughter that gives away
The girl who plays love's games in a hiding-place --
Off comes a ring coaxed down an arm or
Pulled from a faintly resisting finger.
[tr. Michie (1963)]

Take love while you're young and you can,
Laugh, dance,
Before time takes your chances
Away. Stroll where baths, where theaters
Bring Romans to walk, to talk, where whispers
Flit through the darkness as lovers meet,
And girls laugh from hidden corners,
Happy as favors
Are snatched in the darkness, laugh
And pretend to say no.
[tr. Raffel (1983)]

While you're still young,
And while morose old age is far away,
There's love, there are parties, there's dancing and there's music,
There are young people out in the city squares together
As evening comes on, there are whispers of lovers, there's laughter.
[tr. Ferry (1997)]

Do not disdain, boy, sweet love; and dance
while you are yet in bloom, and crabbed age far away.
Now frequent the Campus Martius
and public ways, and pizzas where soft whispers
are repeated at the trysting hour
and where the suffocated laughter of a girl
lurking in a corner reveals
secret betrayal and the forfeit
snatched away from a wrist
or from a finger, scarcely resisting.
[tr. Alexander (1999)]

And while you're young don't scorn
sweet love affairs and dances,
so long as crabbed old age is far from
your vigor. Now let the playing field and the
public squares and soft whisperings at nightfall
(the appointed hour) be your pursuits;
now too the sweet laughter of a girl hiding
in a secret corner, which gives her away,
and a pledge snatched from her wrists
or her feebly resisting finger.
[tr. Wikisource (2021)]

 
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None is a foole alwaies, every one sometimes.

George Herbert (1593-1633) Welsh priest, orator, poet.
Jacula Prudentum, or Outlandish Proverbs, Sentences, &c. (compiler), # 163 (1640 ed.)
    (Source)

See Lincoln.
 
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The object of education for that mind should be the teaching itself how to react with vigor and economy. No doubt the world at large will always lag so far behind the active mind as to make a soft cushion of inertia to drop upon, as it did for Henry Adams; but education should try to lessen the obstacles, diminish the friction, invigorate the energy, and should train minds to react, not at haphazard, but by choice, on the lines of force that attract their world. What one knows is, in youth, of little moment; they know enough who know how to learn.

Henry Adams (1838-1918) American journalist, historian, academic, novelist
The Education of Henry Adams, ch. 21 (1907)
    (Source)
 
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Thirst, hunger, and nakedness, are positive evils: but wealth is relative; and a prince who would be rich in a private station, may be exposed by the increase of his wants to all the anxiety and bitterness of poverty.

Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) English historian
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. 61 (1776-88)
    (Source)
 
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Awl plezzures are lawful that don’t end in making us feel sorry.
 
[All pleasures are lawful that don’t end in making us feel sorry.]

Josh Billings (1818-1885) American humorist, aphorist [pseud. of Henry Wheeler Shaw]
Everybody’s Friend, Or; Josh Billing’s Encyclopedia and Proverbial Philosophy of Wit and Humor, ch. 148 “Affurisms: Ink Brats” (1874)
    (Source)
 
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Hail, lady of no light footfall,
And eyes not black, and nose not small,
And lips not dry, and hands not long,
And, truly, not too nice a tongue,
The Formian bankrupt’s paramour.
The Province calls you dainty? Your
Face, and not Lesbia’s, is the rage?
O! dull and undiscerning age!

[Salve, nec minimo puella naso
nec bello pede nec nigris ocellis
nec longis digitis nec ore sicco
nec sane nimis elegante lingua,
decoctoris amica Formiani.
Ten provincia narrat esse bellam?
Tecum Lesbia nostra comparatur?
O saeclum insapiens et infacetum!]

gaius valerius catullus
Catullus (c. 84 BC – c. 54 BC) Latin poet [Gaius Valerius Catullus]
Carmina # 43 “To Mamurra’s Mistress” [tr. MacNaghten (1925)]
    (Source)

Mamurra, also known as Formianus (from the province of Formiae), was an ally of Caesar, but enemy of Catullus. Catullus devotes a number of his odes to attacking Mamurra or, in a few cases, his mistress (who, in some sources, is named Amiana or Ameana).

The poem is noteworthy both for cateloguing unattractive traits (Roman poetry and art make it clear what was considered attractive), and for the final line in its condemnation of a land that would ever place the unnamed mistress over the beauties of Catullus' beloved Lesbia.

(Source (Latin)). Alternate translations:

Though splaw thy feet, and snub thy nose,
Thy fingers short, and unlike sloes
Thine eyes in hue may be;
Thy lip with driv'lling moisture dew'd
Thy language vulgar, manners rude,
Yet, wanton, hail to thee!

And does the province praise thy grace;
And e'en presume thy form and face
With Lesbia to compare?
Then why should I thy charms dispraise
'Mid vulgar fools, in tasteless days,
'Tis useless to be fair.
[tr. Lamb (1821)]

Though a decided snub your nose,
Your feet the kind called stumpy,
Your eyes by no means black as sloes,
Your fingers fat and dumpy;
Your lip not peachy soft, your speech
Less aptr to charm than pain us;
Yet still I hail you, mistress frail
Of spendthrift Formianus.

The province, bless its stupid soul!
Is mad about your beauty,
So let me also pay my toll
Of homage and of duty.
But then they say your shape, your grace,
My Lesbia's, mine, surpasses!
Oh woe, to live with such a race
Of buzzards, owls, and asses!
[tr. T. Martin (1861)]

Hail, maiden! with nor little nose,
Nor pretty foot, nor jet-black eye,
Nor fingers long, nor mouth e'er dry,
Nor tongue whence pleasing prattle flows.
You spendthrift Formian's heart engage;
And doth the province call you fair,
And Lesbia's charms with yours compare?
O witless and O boorish age!
[tr. Cranstoun (1867)]

Hail, fair virgin, a nose among the larger,
Feet not dainty, nor eyes to match a raven,
Mouth scarce tenible, hands not wholly faultless,
Tongue most surely not absolute refinement,
Bankrupt Formian, your declar'd devotion.
Thou the beauty, the talk of all the province?
Thou my Lesbia tamely think to rival?
O preposterous, empty generation!
[tr. Ellis (1871)]

Hail, girl who neither nose of minim size
Owns, nor a pretty foot, nor jetty eyes,
Nor thin long fingers, nor mouth dry of slaver
Nor yet too graceful tongue of pleasant flavour,
Leman to Formian that rake-a-hell.
What, can the Province boast of thee as belle?
Thee with my Lesbia durst it make compare?
O Age insipid, of all humour bare!
[tr. Burton (1893)]

Hail, girl with nose not the smallest, and with foot not lovely, and with eyes not black, and with fingers not long, and with mouth not dry and with tongue not so very elegant, the wench of the bankrupt Formian. And the province declares you to be lovely? With you our Lesbia is to be compared? O generation witless and unmannerly!
[tr. Smithers (1894)]

I greet you, lady, you who neither have a tiny nose, nor a pretty foot, nor black eyes, nor long fingers, nor dry mouth, nor indeed a very refined tongue, mistress of the bankrupt Formiae. Is it you who are pretty, as the Province tells us? is it with you that our Lesbia is compared? O, this age! how tasteless and illbred it is!
[tr. Warre Cornish (1904)]

Hail, maid with nose by no means small, foot by no means shapely, eyes by no means of jet, fingers by no means long, mouth by no means dry, speech by no means too refined, friend of the Formian waster. Do the provincials call you beautiful? Do they compare you with my Lesbia? Oh foolish and tasteless age!
[tr. Stuttaford (1912)]

Pshaw, little girl, you're much too small,
You've scarcely any nose at all.
Your feet are shapeless, fingers, too,
Your eyes a dull and faded blue.
With lips as parched as last year's peas.
And silly tongue, untaught to please.
They say that Formian calls you fair.
And that they praise you everywhere.
A dull and senseless age -- ah me.
If they could Lesbia's beauty see!
[tr. Stewart (1915)]

Thy nose is broad and large thy feet,
Thine eyes are neither dark nor clear,
Thy hands are squat, thy lips unsweet,
Thy language shocks a decent ear.
Thy province swears that thou art fair,
O mistress of a village beau!
Swears thou with Lesbia canst compare;
O tasteless age, thy wits how slow!
[tr. Symons-Jeune (1923)]

Good morning, dear lady; your nose is too long,
Your fingers too stumpy, your language too strong.
Your feet are ill shaped, and your lips wet with slobber,
Your eyes pale and dull; and your lover's a robber,
Who won't pay his debts. Yet withal people hold
You a beauty , when you're in the country, I'm told.
To think that dull fools for one instant should dare
Your charms with my Lesbia's face to compare!
[tr. Wright (1926)]

Listen, girl: your nose is not too small and
your foot somehow lacks shapeliness, your eyes
are not so bright , your fingers though they should be
are neither long nor graceful , nor can your lips
(mouth dripping) be kissed for love, nor is your speech
soft music.
And this girl is the lady friend
of that debauched citizen Mamurra.
They say that you are lovely (rumours from the provinces)
comparing you with Lesbia.
The times are bad
and this an ignorant generation.
[tr. Gregory (1931)]

Greetings, girl! You haven't got much --
Neither small nose, nor a pretty foot,
Dark eyes, or slender hands to touch,
No dry mouth; the way you put
Your phrases isn't neat at all,
Mistress of the bankrupt man
From Formiae -- but Cisalpine Gaul
Says you're lovely, lovelier than
My Lesbia, even? Oh, enough!
This ignorant age -- how rude and rough!
[tr. Hollander (1976)]

Greetings ot you, girl of the nose not tiny,
the feet not pretty, eyes not darkly-shadowed,
stubby fat fingers, mouth forever spraying
language that shows us your lack of refinement,
whore of that bankrupt wastrel from Formiae!
Is it your beauty they praise in the province?
Do they compare you to our Lesbia?
Mindless this age. And insensitive, really.
[tr. C. Martin (1979)]

Hello, girl, neither with the smallest nose,
Nor with pretty feet nor with black little eyes
Nor with long fingers nor with dry lips
Nor clearly with a very refined tongue.
Girl/friend of the spendthrift from Formiae,
Does the province report that you are beautiful?
Is our Lesbia compared with you?
O tasteless and crude age!
[tr. Drudy (1997)]

Greetings, girl with a nose not the shortest,
feet not so lovely, eyes not of the darkest,
fingers not slender, mouth never healed,
and a not excessively charming tongue,
bankrupt Formianus’s ‘little friend’.
And the Province pronounces you beautiful?
To be compared to my Lesbia?
O witless and ignorant age!
[tr. Kline (2001)]

Hello, girl without the smallest nose
Nor pretty feet, nor dark eyes
Nor elegant fingers nor dry mouth
Nor language int he least refined
Girlfriend of that bankrupt from Formia.
So country people call you beautiful?!
Our Lesbia is compared with you?!
Oh, what a stupid and tasteless age this is!
[tr. Wikibooks (2017)]

Greetings, you girl with neither a little nose,
nor handsome feet, black little eyes
long fingers, a dry mouth,
and truly tongue not exceedingly elegant.
Girlfriend of the bankrupt of Formiae,
does the province say that you are beautiful?
Is our Lesbia compared with you?
Oh foolish and coarse generation!
[tr. Wikisource (2018)]

Howdy, girl with the not-small nose,
Feet not beautiful, eyes not black,
Fingers not long, the lips not dry,
A tongue not quite so elegant,
“Friend” of a Formian bankrupt.
The sticks proclaim you’re beautiful?
With you our Lesbia is compared?
O times, unthinking and vulgar!
[tr. @sentantiq (2021)]

 
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You seem to have great possessions! How else can this be, but that you have preferred your own enjoyment to the consolation of the many? For the more you abound in wealth, the more you lack in love.

[ἀλλὰ μὴν φαίνῃ ἔχων κτήματα πολλά. Πόθεν ταῦτα; ἢ δῆλον ὅτι τὴν οἰκείαν ἀπόλαυσιν προτι μοτέραν τῆς τῶν πολλῶν παραμυθίας ποιούμενος. Ὅσον οὖν πλεονάζεις τῷ πλούτῳ, τοσοῦτον ἐλλείπεις τῇ ἀγάπῃ.]

basil the great
Basil of Caesarea (AD 330-378) Christian bishop, theologian, monasticist, Doctor of the Church [Saint Basil the Great, Ἅγιος Βασίλειος ὁ Μέγας]
“To the Rich [Ὁμιλία πρὸς τοὺς πλουτούντας],” sermon (c. 368) [tr. Schroeder (2009)]
    (Source)

In C. Paul Schroeder, ed., Saint Basil on Social Justice (2009).
 
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Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.

Neil Postman (1931-2003) American author, media theorist, cultural critic
The Disappearance of Childhood, Introduction (1982)
    (Source)
 
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FAITH, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge of things without parallel.

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) American writer and journalist
“Faith,” The Cynic’s Word Book (1906)
    (Source)

Included in The Devil's Dictionary (1911). Originally published in the "Devil's Dictionary" column in the San Francisco Wasp (1884-06-07).
 
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Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.

Will Rogers (1879-1935) American humorist
Column (1930-04-28), “Daily Telegram: Will Rogers Sees No Value in All the Time We Save”
    (Source)

Written while in Beverly Hills. Collected in The Autobiography of Will Rogers, ch. 15 (1949) [ed. Donald Day].
 
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We lavish on animals the love we are afraid to show to people. People might not return it; or worse, they might.

Mignon McLaughlin (1913-1983) American journalist and author
The Neurotic’s Notebook, ch. 1 (1963)
    (Source)
 
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These two hated with a hate
Found only on the stage.

Lord Byron
George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) English poet
Don Juan, Canto 4, st. 93 (1821)
    (Source)
 
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With books, as with companions, it is of more consequence to know which to avoid, than which to chuse; for good books are as scarce as good companions, and in both instances, all that we can learn from bad ones, is, that so much time has been worse than thrown away.

Charles Caleb "C. C." Colton (1780-1832) English cleric, writer, aphorist
Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Vol. 1, Preface (1820)
    (Source)
 
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DROMIO OF SYRACUSE: Marry, he must have a long spoon that must eat with the devil.

Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Comedy of Errors, Act 4, sc. 3, l. 65ff (4.3.65-66) (1594)
    (Source)

The phrase was popularized by Shakespeare, but had appeared earlier, e.g., Chaucer, "The Squire's Tale," ll. 602-603, Canterbury Tales (c. 1386):

"Therfor bihoveth him a ful long spoon
That shal ete with a feend," thus herde I seye.

 
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LUCIUS: From hence, let fierce contending nations know,
What dire effects from civil discord flow.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Cato, Act 5, sc. 5, l. 106ff (1713)
    (Source)
 
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Thou knowest that since the invention of gun-powder, there is no place impregnable: that is to say, Usbek, there is no longer any asylum upon earth against injustice and violence. I always tremble for fear at last some invention will be found out of a shorter way to destroy mankind, and to depopulate whole nations and whole kingdoms.

[Tu sais que, depuis l’invention de la poudre, il n’y a plus de places imprenables ; c’est-à-dire, Usbek, qu’il n’y a plus d’asile sur la terre contre l’injustice et la violence. Je tremble toujours qu’on ne parvienne à la fin à découvrir quelque secret qui fournisse une voie plus abrégée pour faire périr les hommes, détruire les peuples et les nations entières.]

Charles-Lewis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755) French political philosopher
Persian Letters [Lettres Persanes], Letter 106, Rhedi to Usbek (1721) [tr. Ozell (1760 ed.), # 105]
    (Source)

(Source (French)). Alternate translations:

Thou knowest, that since the Invention of gun-powder, there is no place impregnable; that is to say, Ushek, that there is not any longer an asylum upon earth against injustice and violence. I always tremble, left they should at arrive at last, at the discovery of some secret, which may furnish them with a shorter way to destroy mankind, and to depopulate whole nations and whole kingdoms.
[tr. Floyd (1762), # 105]

You know that since the invention of gunpowder no place is impregnable; that is to say, Usbek, that there is no longer upon the earth a refuge from injustice and violence. I dread always lest they should at last discover some secret which will furnish them with a briefer method of destroying men, by killing them off wholesale in tribes and nations.
[tr. Davidson (1891)]

You know that, since the invention of gunpowder, no fortress is impregnable; that is to say, Usbek, that there is no longer upon earth an asylum against injustice and violence. I am always in terror lest some secret or other should be at length discovered that will not only kill men, but destroy entire tribes and nations.
[tr. Betts (1897)]

You know that since the invention of gunpowder there have been no impregnable places; and this is to say, Usbek, that there is no longer an asylum from injustice and violence any¬ where on the earth. I am in constant terror that ultimately someone will succeed in discovering some secret which will furnish an even more efficient way to kill men, by destroying whole peoples and entire nations.
[tr. Healy (1964)]

You know, since the invention of gunpowder, no fortification is impregnable; in other words, Usbek, there no longer exists, anywhere on earth, any asylum from injustice and violence. I live in fear that men of science will eventually discover some secret which would offer a faster day to kill people, destroy races, and wipe out entire nations.
[tr. Mauldon (2008)]

You know that since the invention of gunpowder, no place is impregnable -- and that is to say, Usbek, that there is no place on earth where we are safe from injustice and violence. I tremble at the thought that eventually someone will discover some new secret that will lead to an even more efficient way to kill even more people, perhaps to destroy entire populations and nations.
[tr. MacKenzie (2014), # 105]

 
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The King’s cheese is half wasted in parings: But no matter, ’tis made of the peoples milk.

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher, aphorist
Poor Richard (1735 ed.)
    (Source)
 
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“Just once more” is the Devil’s best argument.

helen rowland
Helen Rowland (1875-1950) American journalist and humorist
Reflections of a Bachelor Girl (1909)
    (Source)
 
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There is no Death! What seems so is transition;
This life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life Elysian,
Whose portal we call Death.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
“Resignation,” st. 5 (1849), The Seaside and the Fireside (1850)
    (Source)
 
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Perhaps the greatest rudenesses of our time come not from the callousness of strangers, but from the solicitousness of intimates who believe that their frank criticisms are always welcome, and who feel free to “be themselves” with those they love, which turns out to mean being their worst selves, while saving their best behavior for strangers.

Judith Martin (b. 1938) American author, journalist, etiquette expert [a.k.a. Miss Manners]
Common Courtesy, “Those Who Would Change the Country’s Manners Encounter Citizen Resistance” (1985)
    (Source)
 
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The true rule, in determining to embrace, or reject any thing, is not whether it have any evil in it; but whether it have more of evil, than of good. There are few things wholly evil, or wholly good. Almost every thing, especially of governmental policy, is an inseparable compound of the two; so that our best judgment of the preponderance between them is continually demanded.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
Speech (1848-06-20), On Internal Improvements, US House of Representatives
    (Source)
 
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And in that moment Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later. For the first time he realized that the man before him was not an aging father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best he could, out of a sense of duty and, perhaps love, adopted a role called Being a Father so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a Protector, who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life.

tom wolfe
Tom Wolfe (1930-2018) American author and journalist [Thomas Kennerly Wolfe Jr.]
The Bonfire of the Vanities, ch. 21 (1987)
    (Source)
 
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Administrivia: D’oh!

Since April, my RSS feeds (and, thus, my WIST-by-email stuff) has been kind of wonky. I do some non-standard things with WordPress to structure my quotations database, and each time I do an upgrade in the software I have go change the RSS feeds programming to output the right things in the right places (for the normal online blog, the theme takes care of that).

Well, in April, despite my best efforts and my being willing to swear up and down that I was, in fact, updating those RSS PHP files, the RSS feeds (and emails) were stubbornly remaining their default values — which meant that you couldn’t actually tell who was saying the things I was quoting, without drilling down to the underlying blog entry.

I took advantage of my family giving me some free time for Fathers Day to look at it again, and, lo! my assumptions about what PHP files were being updated in which domain turned out to be completely wrong. It’s almost as if Dante was trying to whisper in my ear yesterday.

Long story short (too late), I have now, it appears, fixed this problem. RSS feeds should look correct. Quotes by email should look correct. All’s right with the world. At least until my next WP upgrade.

And if none of the above makes any sense to you, that’s fine. If you are interested in the email or RSS feeds for this site, you can get more information here.


 
Added on 15-Jun-24; last updated 15-Jun-24
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You dull your own perceptions
with false imaginings and do not grasp
what would be clear but for your preconceptions.
 
[Tu stesso ti fai grosso
col falso imaginar, sì che non vedi
ciò che vedresti se l’avessi scosso.]

Dante Alighieri the poet
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) Italian poet
The Divine Comedy [Divina Commedia], Book 3 “Paradiso,” Canto 1, l. 88ff (1.88-90) [Beatrice] (1320) [tr. Ciardi (1970)]
    (Source)

Dante's beloved Beatrice greets him for the first time since his arrival in Paradise, chiding him for his terrestrial assumptions of what he's seeing.(Source (Italian)). Alternate translations:

False Forms deceive thy optics. Son of Man!
With shadowy objects which eclipse the true.
[tr. Boyd (1802), st. 20]

With false imagination thou thyself
Mak’st dull, so that thou seest not the thing,
Which thou hadst seen, had that been shaken off.
[tr. Cary (1814)]

Imagination false
Hath made thee dull, so that thou canst not see
That thou might'st, hadst thou looked diligently.
[tr. Bannerman (1850)]

Thou makest thyself so dull
With false imagining, that thou seest not
What thou wouldst see if thou hadst shaken it off.
[tr. Longfellow (1867)]

Thou thyself makest thyself gross with false imagining, so that thou seest not that which thou wouldest have seen, if thou hadst shaken it off.
[tr. Butler (1885)]

Thyself thou makest blind
With thy false fancy, that thou canst not see
What thou wouldst see, if this were thrown behind.
[tr. Minchin (1885)]

Thou thyself makest thyself dull with false imagining, so that thou seest not what thou wouldst see, if thou hadst shaken it off.
[tr. Norton (1892)]

Thou thyself makest thyself dense Earthly with false imagining, and so thou seest not what heavenly thou wouldst see, if thou hadst cast it off.
[tr. Wicksteed (1899)]

Thou dullest thine own wit
With false imagination, nor preceivest
That which thou wouldst perceive, being rid of it.
[tr. Sayers/Reynolds (1962)]

Thou makest thyself dull with false fancies so that thou canst not see as thou wouldst if thou hadst cast them off.
[tr. Sinclair (1939)]

Thou makest thyself dense of wit
With false fancy, so that thou dost not see
What thou would’st see, wert thou but rid of it.
[tr. Binyon (1943)]

You make yourself dull with false imagining, so that you do not see what you would see had you cast it off.
[tr. Singleton (1975)]

You are making yourself stupid
By imagining what isn’t, so that you do not
See what you would if you could shake that off.
[tr. Sisson (1981)]

You make yourself
obtuse with false imagining; you can
not see what you would see if you dispelled it.
[tr. Mandelbaum (1984)]

You have yourself to blame for burdening
your mind with misconceptions that prevent
from seeing clearly what you might have seen.
[tr. Musa (1984)]

You are making yourself swell
with false imagining, so that you do not see
what shaking it off would show.
[tr. Durling (2011)]

You make yourself stupid with false imaginings, and so you do not see, what you would see, if you discarded them.
[tr. Kline (2002)]

With false imaginings
you make yourself so dull you fail to see
what, shaking off this cloud, you’d see quite well.
[tr. Kirkpatrick (2007)]

You make yourself dull-witted
with false notions, so that you cannot see
what you would understand, had you but cast them off.
[tr. Hollander/Hollander (2007)]

You're overwhelming yourself with false
And foolish conjuring, preventing what your eyes
Would see if you did not struggle so hard for triumph.
[tr. Raffel (2010)]

You get all mixed up
By sticking with a figment of your imagination, so
You don’t see what you would see if you shook it off.
[tr. Bang (2021)]

 
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Away with silks, away with lawn,
I’ll have no scenes or curtains drawn;
Give me my mistress as she is,
Dress’d in her nak’d simplicities;
For as my heart e’en so mine eye
Is won with flesh, not drapery.

Robert Herrick (1591-1674) English poet
“Clothes Do But Cheat and Cozen Us,” Hesperides, # 402 (1648)
    (Source)
 
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Without favour none will know you, and with it you will not know your selfe.

George Herbert (1593-1633) Welsh priest, orator, poet.
Jacula Prudentum, or Outlandish Proverbs, Sentences, &c. (compiler), # 159 (1640 ed.)
    (Source)
 
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That man must be everyone’s personal enemy who has behaved like a public enemy to his own friends. No wise man ever felt that a traitor ought to be trusted.

[Omnium est communis inimicus qui fuit hostis suorum. Nemo umquam sapiens proditori credendum putavit.]

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) Roman orator, statesman, philosopher
In Verrem [Against Verres; Verrine Orations], Action 2, Book 1, ch. 15 / sec. 38 (1.15.38) (70 BC) [tr. Greenwood (1928)]
    (Source)

(Source (Latin)). Alternate translations:

He is the common enemy of all men who has once been the enemy of his own connections. No wise man ever thought that a traitor was to be trusted
[tr. Yonge (1903)]

He is a common enemy who has been a foe to his own people. No man of sense has ever considreed a traitor worthy of credence.
[ed. Harbottle (1906)]

 
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What a mystery this is, desire. The love sickness, the sensitivity, the obsession, the flutter of the heart, the ebb and flow of the blood. There is no drug and no alcohol to equal it.

Anaïs Nin (1903-1977) Catalan-Cuban-French author, diarist
Diary (1943-04)
    (Source)
 
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Your memory is a monster; you forget — it doesn’t. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you — and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!

John Irving
John Irving (b. 1942) American-Canadian novelist and screenwriter [b. John Wallace Blunt Jr.]
A Prayer for Owen Meany, ch. 1 “The Foul Ball” (1989)
    (Source)
 
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By some happy fortuity, man is a projector, a designer, a builder, a craftsman; it is among his most dependable joys to impose upon the flux that passes before him some mark of himself, aware though he always must be of the odds against him. His reward is not so much in the work as in its making; not so much in the prize as in the race. We may win when we lose, if we have done what we can; for by so doing we have made real at least some part of that finished product in whose fabrication we are most concerned: ourselves.

Learned Hand (1872-1961) American jurist
Speech (1955-01-29), “A Fanfare for Prometheus,” American Jewish Committee annual dinner, New York City
    (Source)
 
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After all, my earstwhile dear,
My no longer cherished,
Need we say it was not love,
Now that love is perished?

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) American poet
“Passer Mortuus Est”, st. 3, Second April (1921)
    (Source)
 
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Again, we should notice the force, effect, and consequences of inventions, which are nowhere more conspicuous than in those three which were unknown to the ancients; namely, printing, gunpowder, and the compass. For these three have changed the appearance and state of the whole world; first in literature, then in warfare, and lastly in navigation: and innumerable changes have been thence derived, so that no empire, sect, or star, appears to have exercised a greater power and influence on human affairs than these mechanical discoveries.

[Rursus, vim et virtutem et consequentias rerum inventarum notare juvat; quae non in aliis manifestius occurrunt, quam in illis tribus quae antiquis incognitae, et quarum primordia, licet recentia, obscura et ingloria sunt: Artis nimirum Imprimendi, Pulveris Tormentarii, et Acus Nauticae. Haec enim tria rerum faciem et statum in orbe terrarum mutaverunt: primum, in re literaria; secundum, in re bellica; tertium, in navigationibus: unde innumerae rerum mutationes sequutae sunt; ut non imperium aliquod, non secta, non stella, majorem efficaciam et quasi influxum super res humanas exercuisse videatur, quam ista mechanica exercuerunt.]

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) English philosopher, scientist, author, statesman
Instauratio Magna [The Great Instauration], Part 2 “Novum Organum [The New Organon],” Book 1, Aphorism # 129 (1620) [tr. Wood (1831)]
    (Source)

(Source (Latin)). Alternate translations:

Again, it is well to observe the force and virtue and consequences of discoveries; and these are to be seen nowhere more conspicuously than in those three which were unknown to the ancients, and of which the origin, though recent, is obscure and inglorious; namely, printing, gunpowder, and the magnet. For these three have changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world; the first in literature, the second in warfare, the third in navigation; whence have followed innumerable changes; insomuch that no empire, no sect, no star seems to have exerted greater power and influence in human affairs than these mechanical discoveries.
[tr. Spedding (1858)]

Again, it is well to mark the force, virtue, and consequences of discoveries; and these occur nowhere more manifestly than in those which were unknown to the ancients, and whose origin, though recent, is obscure and inglorious; the Arts, namely, of Printing, of Gunpowder, and the Mariner's Compass. For these three have changed the face and condition of things all over the world; the first in letters, the second in war, the third in navigation. And hence numberless changes have followed; so that no government, no sect, no star, seems to have exercised greater power and influence over human affairs than these mechanical discoveries.
[tr. Johnson (1859)]

Again, it helps to notice the force, power and consequences of discoveries, which appear at their clearest in three things that were unknown to antiquity, and whose origins, though recent, are obscure and unsung: namely, the art of printing, gunpowder and the nautical compass. In fact these three things have changed the face and condition of things all over the globe: the first in literature; the second in the art of war; the third in navigation; and innumerable changes have followed; so that no empire or sect or star seems to have exercised a greater power and influence on human affairs than those mechanical things.
[tr. Silverthorne (2000)]

Notice the vigour of discoveries, their power to generate consequences. This is nowhere more obvious than in three discoveries that the ancients didn’t know and whose origins (all quite recent) were obscure and humdrum. I am talking about the arts of printing, gunpowder, and the nautical compass. These three have changed the whole aspect and state of things throughout the world -- the first in literature, the second in warfare, the third in navigation -- bringing about countless changes; so that there seems to have been no empire, no philosophical system, no star that has exerted greater power and influence in human affairs than these mechanical discoveries.
[tr. Bennett (2017)]

 
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You have a good many little gifts and virtues, but there is no need of parading them, for conceit spoils the finest genius. There is not much danger that real talent or goodness will be overlooked long, and the great charm of all power is modesty.

Louisa May Alcott
Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) American writer
Little Women, ch. 7 “Amy’s Valley of Humiliation” [Mrs. March] (1868)
    (Source)

 
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I still should not want you to smile on all occasions:
for nothing is more silly than a silly smile.

[Tamen renidere usque quaque te nollem;
Nam risu inepto res ineptior nulla est.]

gaius valerius catullus
Catullus (c. 84 BC – c. 54 BC) Latin poet [Gaius Valerius Catullus]
Carmina # 39 “To Egnatius,” ll. 15-16 [tr. McDonnell (1998)]
    (Source)

(Source (Latin)). Alternate translations:

E'en then that ceaseless ill-tim'd grin forego:
A silly laugh's the silliest thing I know.
[tr. Nott (1795), # 37]

I'd say renounce thy ceaseless idiot grin,
A silly laugh is folly, if not sin.
[tr. Cranstoun (1867)]

Yet sweetly smiling ever I would have you not,
For silly laughter, it's a silly thing indeed.
[tr. Ellis (1871)]

Yet thy incessant grin I would not see,
For naught than laughter silly sillier be.
[tr. Burton (1893)]

Still I wish you wouldn't grin forever everywhere; for nothing is more senseless than senseless giggling.
[tr. Smithers (1894)]

Still I should not like you to be smiling everlastingly; for there is nothing more silly than a silly laugh.
[tr. Warre Cornish (1904)]

I would have you drop your endless grin: for nothing is more inane than inane laughter.
[tr. Stuttaford (1912)]

Still not to smile for aye is wisdom's rule:
For folly's laugh proclaims the peerless fool.
[tr. MacNaghten (1925)]

I still should still disapprove that constant smile;
It shows a silly, poor, affected style.
[tr. Wright (1926)]

Your smile would still offend me; nothing is worse
than senseless laughter from a foolish face.
[tr. Gregory (1931)]

I still wouldn't want to see you always grinning,
for nothing is more inept than inept laughter.
[tr. C. Martin (1979)]

I’d still not want you to smile all the time:
there’s nothing more foolish than foolishly smiling.
[tr. Kline (2001)]

I'd still not want you flashing yours all round since
nothing's more fatuous than a fatuous grin.
[tr. Green (2005)]

I still should not want you to smile on all occasions:
for nothing is more silly than a silly smile.
[tr. Wikisource (2018)]

 
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There is nothing which a prudent man must shun more carefully than living with a view to popularity and giving serious thought to the things esteemed by the multitude, instead of making sound reason his guide of life, so that, even if he must gainsay all men and fall into disrepute and incur danger for the sake of what is honourable, he will in no wise choose to swerve from what has been recognized as right.

[ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἔστιν ὃ μᾶλλον φευκτέον τῷ σωφρονοῦντι, τοῦ πρὸς δόξαν ζῆν, καὶ τὰ τοῖς πολλοῖς δοκοῦντα περισκοπεῖν, καὶ μὴ. τὸν ὀρθὸν λόγον ἡγεμόνα ποιεῖσθαι τοῦ βίου, ὥστε, κἂν πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις ἀντιλέγειν, κἂν ἀδοξεῖν καὶ κινδυνεύειν ὑ ὑπὲρ τοῦ καλοῦ δέῃ, μηδὲν αἱρεῖσθαι τῶν ὀρθῶς ἐγνωσμένων παρακινεῖν.]

basil the great
Basil of Caesarea (AD 330-378) Christian bishop, theologian, monasticist, Doctor of the Church [Saint Basil the Great, Ἅγιος Βασίλειος ὁ Μέγας]
Address to Young Men on Reading Greek Literature, ch. 9, sec. 25 [tr. Deferrari/McGuire (1933)]
    (Source)
 
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Someday we will regard our children not as creatures to manipulate or to change but rather as messengers from a world we once deeply knew, but which we have long since forgotten, who can reveal to us more about the true secrets of life, and also our own lives, than our parents were ever able to.

alice miller
Alice Miller (1923-2010) Polish-Swiss psychologist, psychoanalyst, philosopher
For Your Own Good [Am Anfang war Erziehung], “Preface to the American Edition” (1980) [tr. Hannum/Hannum (1983)]
    (Source)
 
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They don’t ask much of you. They only want you to hate the things you love and to love the things you despise.

Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) Russian poet, novelist, and literary translator
Quoted in “Farewell in a Poet’s Land,” Life Magazine (1960-06-13)
    (Source)

On the Communist leadership of the Soviet Union.

This article was an obituary for Pasternak. I have been unable to find a primary source for the quote.
 
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Sex gives us a glimpse of a concentration of the mind that would make us godlike if we could command it in other spheres.

colin wilson
Colin Wilson (1931-2013) English existentialist philosopher, novelist
The God of the Labyrinth [The Hedonists] (1970)
    (Source)
 
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Time will explain it all. He is a talker, and needs no questioning before he speaks.

[τὰ πόλλ’ ἀνάγκη διαφέρει τολμήματα]

Euripides (485?-406? BC) Greek tragic dramatist
Æolus [Αἴολος], frag. 38 (TGF)
    (Source)
 
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We sleek, well-fed folk can hardly realize what feeling hungry is like. We know what it is to have no appetite and not to care for the dainty victuals placed before us, but we do not understand what it means to sicken for food — to die for bread while others waste it — ­to gaze with famished eyes upon coarse fare steaming behind dingy windows, longing for a pen’orth of pea pudding and not having the penny to buy it — ­to feel that a crust would be delicious and that a bone would be a banquet.

Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927) English writer, humorist [Jerome Klapka Jerome]
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, “On Eating and Drinking” (1886)
    (Source)
 
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I had a very pleasant evening, however, though you will probably find out that there was no particular reason for it; but I do not think it worth while to wait for enjoyment until there is some real opportunity for it.

Jane Austen
Jane Austen (1775-1817) English author
Letter (1799-01-21) to Cassandra Austen
    (Source)
 
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The hardest-learned lesson: that people have only their kind of love to give, not our kind.

Mignon McLaughlin (1913-1983) American journalist and author
The Neurotic’s Notebook, ch. 1 (1963)
 
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Nothing so difficult as a beginning
In poesy, unless perhaps the end.

Lord Byron
George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) English poet
Don Juan, Canto 4, st. 1 (1821)
    (Source)
 
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ADRIANA: He is deformèd, crooked, old, and sere,
Ill-faced, worse-bodied, shapeless everywhere,
Vicious, ungentle, foolish, blunt, unkind,
Stigmatical in making, worse in mind.

Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Comedy of Errors, Act 4, sc. 2, l. 21ff (4.2.21-24) (1594)
    (Source)
 
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CATO: How beautiful is death, when earn’d by virtue!
Who would not be that youth? What pity is it
That we can die but once to serve our country!

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Cato, Act 4, sc. 4, l. 79ff (1713)
    (Source)

On being presented with the corpse of his son. This line is thought to have inspired Nathan Hale.
 
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A man compensates for the lack of a talent by despising it. He removes the obstacle he finds between himself and merit, and so finds himself on a plane with those whose work he envies.
 
[Un homme à qui il manque un talent se dédommage en le méprisant: il ôte cet obstacle qu’il rencontroit entre le mérite et lui; et, par là, se trouve au niveau de celui dont il redoute les travaux.]

Charles-Lewis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755) French political philosopher
Persian Letters [Lettres Persanes], Letter 145, Usbek to *** (1721) [tr. Healy (1964)]
    (Source)

(Source (French)). Alternate translations:

A man to whom a talent is wanting, makes himself amends by despising it: he removes that obstacle which was between merit and him, and thereby finds himself on a level with the man whose pen he dreads.
[tr. Ozell (1760 ed.), # 73]

When a man is destitute of any particular talent, he indemnifies himself, by expressing his contempt for it; he removes that obstacle which stood between merit and him, and by that means, raises himself to a level with those whom he before feared as rivals.
[tr. Floyd (1762)]

When a man lacks a particular talent, he indemnifies himself by despising it: he removes the impediment between him and merit; and in that way finds himself on a level with those of whose works he formerly stood in awe.
[tr. Davidson (1891)]

A man who lacks a certain talent compensates himself by despising it: he removes the obstacle placed between him and merit, and thereby finds himself on an equality with the person whose labors he dreads.
[tr. Betts (1897)]

A man who lacks a certain talent will compensate himself by despising it; he eliminates the obstacle which blocks his path to excellence, and, as a consequence, sees himself as the equal of the rival whose work he fears.
[tr. Mauldon (2008), # 156]

 
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When will the Miser’s Chest be full enough?
When will he cease his Bags to cram and stuff?
All Day he labours and all Night contrives,
Providing as if he’d an hundred Lives.
While endless Care cuts short the common Span:
So have I seen with Dropsy swoln, a Man,
Drink and drink more, and still unsatisfi’d,
Drink till Drink drown’d him, yet he thirsty dy’d.

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher, aphorist
Poor Richard (1735 ed.)
    (Source)
 
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When two people decide to get a divorce, it isn’t a sign that they “don’t understand” one another, but a sign that they have, at last, begun to.

helen rowland
Helen Rowland (1875-1950) American journalist and humorist
A Guide to Men, “Divorces” (1922)
    (Source)
 
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I can remember how when I was young I believed death to be a phenomenon of the body; now I know it to be merely a function of the mind — and that of the minds who suffer the bereavement. The nihilists say it is the end; the fundamentalists, the beginning; when in reality it is no more than a single tenant or family moving out of a tenement or a town.

William Faulkner (1897-1962) American novelist
As I Lay Dying, “Peabody” (1930)
    (Source)
 
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We are all born rude. No infant has ever appeared yet with the grace to understand how inconsiderate it is to disturb others in the middle of the night.

Judith Martin (b. 1938) American author, journalist, etiquette expert [a.k.a. Miss Manners]
Common Courtesy, “In the Quest for Equality, Civilization Itself Is Maligned” (1985)
    (Source)
 
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Whether elected or appointed
He considers himself the Lord’s anointed,
And indeed the ointment lingers on him
So thick you can’t get your fingers on him.

Ogden Nash (1902-1971) American poet
“The Politician,” st. 2, I’m a Stranger Here Myself (1938)
    (Source)
 
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How rich a man is all desire to know;
But none inquires if good he be or no.

Robert Herrick (1591-1674) English poet
“Gold Before Goodness,” Hesperides, # 328 (1648)
    (Source)
 
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The mill cannot grind with the water that’s past.

George Herbert (1593-1633) Welsh priest, orator, poet.
Jacula Prudentum, or Outlandish Proverbs, Sentences, &c. (compiler), # 153 (1640 ed.)
    (Source)
 
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O my brave men! stout hearts of mine!
who often have suffered worse calamities with me.
let us now drown your cares in wine.
Tomorrow we venture once again upon the boundless sea.

[O fortes peioraque passi
mecum saepe viri, nunc vino pellite curas;
cras ingens iterabimus aequor.]

Horace (65-8 BC) Roman poet and satirist [Quintus Horacius Flaccus]
Odes [Carmina], Book 1, # 7, l. 30ff (1.7.30-32) (23 BC) [tr. Alexander (1999)]
    (Source)

To L. Munatius Plancus. Quoting Teucer to his crew on his being exiled from Salamis.

Quoted in Montaigne, 3.13 "On Experience" (immediately following this).

(Source (Latin)). Alternate translations:

Brave Spirits, who with me have suffer'd sorrow,
Drink cares away; wee'l set up sails to-morrow.
[tr. "Sir T. H.," Brome (1666)]

Cheer, rouze your force,
For We have often suffer'd worse:
Drink briskly round, dispell all cloudy sorrow,
Drink round, Wee'l plow the Deep to-morrow.
[tr. Creech (1684)]

Hearts, that have borne with me
Worse buffets! drown today in wine your care;
To-morrow we recross the wide, wide sea!
[tr. Conington (1872)]

O gallant heroes, and often my fellow-sufferers in greater hardships than these, now drive away your cares with wine: to-morrow we will re-visit the vast ocean.
[tr. Smart/Buckley (1853)]

Now, ye brave hearts, that have weather'd
Many a sorer strait with me,
Chase your cares with wine, — to-morrow
We shall plough the mighty sea!
[tr. Martin (1864)]

Brave friends who have borne with me often
Worse things as men, let the wine chase to-day every care from the bosom,
To-morrow -- again the great Sea Plains.
[tr. Bulwer-Lytton (1870)]

My comrades bold, to worse than this
Inured, to-morrow brave the vasty brine,
But drown to-day your cares in wine.
[tr. Gladstone (1894)]

O brave friends, who have oft with your leader
Suffer'd worse trials, cheer up, let sorrows dissolve in the wine-cup,
We will try the vast ocean to-morrow.
[tr. Phelps (1897)]

O brave men, often worse things ye with me
Have borne, now drive with wine your cares away,
To-morrow we will sail the wide sea once again.
[tr. Garnsey (1907)]

To-night with wine drown care,
Friends oft who've braved worse things with me than these;
At morn o'er the wide sea once more we'll fare!
[tr. Marshall (1908)]

O ye brave heroes, who with me have often suffered worse misfiprtunes, now banish care with wine! To-morrow we will take again our course over the mighty main.
[tr. Bennett (Loeb) (1912)]

With wine now banish care;
Worse things we've known, brave hearts; once more
we'll plough the main tomorrow morn.
[tr. Mills (1924)]

You who have stayed by me through worse disasters,
Heroes, come, drink deep, let wine extinguish our sorrows.
We take the huge sea on again tomorrow.
[tr. Michie (1964)]

O my brave fellows who have gone through worse
Than this with me, now with the help of wine
Let's put aside our troubles for a while.
Tomorrow we set out on the vast ocean.
[tr. Ferry (1997)]

O you brave heroes, you
who suffered worse with me often, drown your cares with wine:
tomorrow we’ll sail the wide seas again.
[tr. Kline (2015)]

 
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What pleasures habitual wrongdoing provides for men without principle or sense of shame, when they have escaped punishment and found themselves given a free hand!

[O consuetudo peccandi, quantam habes iucunditatem improbis et audacibus, cum poena afuit et licentia consecuta est!]

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) Roman orator, statesman, philosopher
In Verrem [Against Verres; Verrine Orations], Action 2, Book 3, ch. 76 / sec. 176 (2.3.76.176) (70 BC) [tr. Greenwood (1928)]
    (Source)

(Source (Latin)). Alternate translations:

O you habit of sinning, what delight you afford to the wicked and the audacious, when chastisement is afar off, and when impunity attends you!
[tr. Yonge (1903)]

Alas, the habit of evil-doing! what pleasure it affords to the depraved and the shameless, when punishment is in abeyance, and has been replaced by license.
[Source (1906)]

 
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Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.

Anaïs Nin (1903-1977) Catalan-Cuban-French author, diarist
Diary (1937-03)
    (Source)
 
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One of the most amazing and perplexing features of mainstream Christianity is that seminarians who learn the historical-critical method in their Bible classes appear to forget all about it when it comes time for them to be pastors. They are taught critical approaches to Scripture, they learn about the discrepancies and contradictions, they discover all sorts of historical errors and mistakes, they come to realize that it is difficult to know whether Moses existed or what Jesus actually said and did, they find that there are other books that were at one time considered canonical but that ultimately did not become part of Scripture (for example, other Gospels and Apocalypses), they come to recognize that a good number of the books of the Bible are pseudonymous (for example, written in the name of an apostle by someone else), that in fact we don’t have the original copies of any of the biblical books but only copies made centuries later, all of which have been altered. They learn all this, and yet when they enter church ministry they appear to put it back on the shelf.

Bart Ehrman
Bart D. Ehrman (b. 1955) American Biblical scholar, author
Jesus, Interrupted, ch. 1 “A Historical Assault on Faith” (2009)
    (Source)
 
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Cruel and savage as orthodoxies have always proved to be, the faithful seem able to convince themselves that the heretics, as they continue to crop up, get nothing worse than their due, and to rest with an easy conscience.

Learned Hand (1872-1961) American jurist
Speech (1955-01-29), “A Fanfare for Prometheus,” American Jewish Committee annual dinner, New York City
    (Source)
 
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But so long as men are not trained to withhold judgment in the absence of evidence, they will be led astray by cocksure prophets, and it is likely that their leaders will be either ignorant fanatics or dishonest charlatans. To endure uncertainty is difficult, but so are most of the other virtues. For the learning of every virtue there is an appropriate discipline, and for the learning of suspended judgment the best discipline is philosophy.

Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
“Philosophy for Laymen,” Universities Quarterly (1946-11)
    (Source)

Reprinted in Unpopular Essays, ch. 2 (1951).
 
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A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn’t know.

H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) American writer and journalist [Henry Lewis Mencken]
A Little Book in C Major, ch. 5, § 5 (1916)
    (Source)

Variants:

CELEBRITY. One who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know.
[A Book of Burlesques, "The Jazz Webster" (1924)]

A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn’t know.
[Chrestomathy, ch. 30 "Sententiae" (1949)]

 
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You deserve a longer letter than this; but it is my unhappy fate seldom to treat people so well as they deserve.

Jane Austen
Jane Austen (1775-1817) English author
Letter (1798-12-24) to Cassandra Austen
    (Source)
 
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It does not undo harm to acknowledge that we have done it; but it undoes us not to acknowledge it.

Mignon McLaughlin (1913-1983) American journalist and author
The Neurotic’s Notebook, ch. 4 (1963)
    (Source)
 
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The Isles of Greece, the Isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all, except their sun, is set.

Lord Byron
George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) English poet
Don Juan, Canto 3, st. 86a “The Isles of Greece,” st. 1 (1821)
    (Source)
 
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The sun should not set upon our anger, neither should he rise upon our confidence. We should freely forgive, but forget rarely. I will not be revenged, and I owe to my enemy; but I will remember, and this I owe to myself.

Charles Caleb "C. C." Colton (1780-1832) English cleric, writer, aphorist
Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Vol. 1, § 35 (1820)
    (Source)
 
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SYPHAX: Young men soon give and soon forget affronts;
Old age is slow in both.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Cato, Act 2, sc. 5, l. 136ff (1713)
    (Source)
 
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I have seen descriptions of Paradise sufficient to make all sensible people give up their hopes of it: some make the happy shades play incessantly on the flute; others condemn them to the torture of an everlasting promenade; while others, who represent them as dreaming on high of their mistresses below, are of opinion that a period of a hundred millions years is not sufficient to overcome a taste for the pains of love.

[J’ai vu des descriptions du paradis, capables d’y faire renoncer tous les gens de bon sens: les uns font jouer sans cesse de la flûte ces ombres heureuses; d’autres les condamnent au supplice de se promener éternellement; d’autres enfin, qui les font rêver là-haut aux maîtresses d’ici-bas, n’ont pas cru que cent millions d’années fussent un terme assez long pour leur ôter le goût de ces inquiétudes amoureuses.]

Charles-Lewis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755) French political philosopher
Persian Letters [Lettres Persanes], Letter 126, Rica to *** (1721) [tr. Davidson (1891)]
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(Source (French)). Alternate translations:

I have seen descriptions of paradise capable of disgusting all men of right understanding: some represent the happy shades incessantly playing on the flute: others condemn them to the punishment of eternally walking about: others again will have those above to be always musing on their mistresses here below, not thinking a hundred millions of years term long enough to make them lose the relish of these amorous inquietudes.
[tr. Ozell (1760 ed.), # 123]

I have read descriptions of Paradise, capable of disgusting every sensible person. The happy shades, according to the fancy of some, are continually playing on the flute, others condemn them to the punishment of eternally walking about; others in short make those above to be always raving after their mistresses here below, not thinking a hundred millions of years long enough to make them get quit of their amorous inquietudes.
[tr. Floyd (1762), # 125]

I have read descriptions of Paradise that would lead all sensible people to renounce it at once: some persons would have the happy shades play eternally on the flute; others condemn them to the torture of a never ending promenade; others who make them dream in heaven of their mistresses on earth, have expressed their belief that even a hundred millions of years would not be long enough to take from them the zest for amatory excitements.
[tr. Betts (1897), # 125]

I have seen descriptions of paradise that would have made any sensible person reject it. Some would have the joyous shades play incessantly upon the flute; others would condemn them to the torture of an eternal promenade; others, who would have them dream on high of their mistresses down below, have assumed that even in a hundred million years they will not lose their taste for such uneasy affairs.
[tr. Healy (1964), # 125]

I have seen descriptions of paradise that would make any man of sense avid going there. Some say the happy spirits in the afterlife engage in an endless bout of flute playing; others that it is an interminable walking about. Others depict them as endlessly dreaming about their mistresses down here, apparently thinking that a hundred million years is too short a time for us to lose our taste for these amorous adventures.
[tr. MacKenzie (2014)]

 
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“Home” is any four walls that enclose the right person.

helen rowland
Helen Rowland (1875-1950) American journalist and humorist
Reflections of a Bachelor Girl (1909)
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GARCIN: I died too soon. I wasn’t allowed time to — to do my deeds.

INEZ: One always dies too soon — or too late. And yet one’s whole life is complete at that moment, with a line drawn neatly under it, ready for the summing up. You are — your life, and nothing else.

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) French philosopher and writer
No Exit [Huis Clos] (1944)
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One reason that the task of inventing manners is so difficult is that etiquette is folk custom, and people have emotional ties to the forms of their youth. That is why there is such hostility between generations in times of rapid change; their manners being different, each feels affronted by the other, taking even the most surface choices for challenges.

Judith Martin (b. 1938) American author, journalist, etiquette expert [a.k.a. Miss Manners]
Common Courtesy, “On Etiquette as Language, Weapon, Custom, and Craft” (1985)
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The surprising surprises once; but the admirable is admired more and more.

[Ce qui étonne, étonne une fois; mais ce qui est admirable est de plus en plus admiré.]

Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist, philosopher, essayist, poet
Pensées [Thoughts], ch. 23 “Des Qualités de l’Écrivain [Of the Qualities of Writers]” ¶ 164 (1850 ed.) [tr. Lyttelton (1899), ch. 22, ¶ 77]
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(Source (French)). Alternate translations:

What astonishes astonishes once, but what is admirable is more and more admired.
[tr. Calvert (1866), ch. 15]

That which astonishes, astonishes once; but whatever is admirable becomes more and more admired.
[tr. Attwell (1896), ¶ 370]

The surprising astonishes once; but the admirable is admired more and more.
[tr. Collins (1928), ch. 22]

 
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calvin & hobbes 1989 05 10 excerptCALVIN’S DAD: It’s funny … when I was a kid, I thought grown-ups never worried about anything. I trusted my parents to take care of everything, and it never occurred to me that they might not know how. I figured that once you grew up, you automatically knew what to do in any given scenario. I don’t think I would have been in such a hurry to reach adulthood if I’d know the whole thing was going to be ad-libbed.

Bill Watterson (b. 1958) American cartoonist
Calvin and Hobbes (1989-05-10)
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After their house has been burgled.
 
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Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.

Jane Jacobs
Jane Jacobs (1916-2006) American-Canadian journalist, author, urban theorist, activist
The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Part 2, ch. 12 (1961)
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Kisses kept are wasted;
Love is to be tasted.
There are some you love, I know;
Be not loath to tell them so.
Lips go dry and eyes grow wet
Waiting to be warmly met,
Keep them not in waiting yet;
Kisses kept are wasted.

Edmund Vance Cooke (1866-1932) Canadian poet
“Kisses Kept Are Wasted,” ll. 1-9, Little Songs for Two (1909)
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That is just the way with Memory; nothing that she brings to us is complete. She is a willful child; all her toys are broken. I remember tumbling into a huge dust-hole when a very small boy, but I have not the faintest recollection of ever getting out again; and if memory were all we had to trust to, I should be compelled to believe I was there still.

Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927) English writer, humorist [Jerome Klapka Jerome]
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, “On Memory” (1886)
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First published in Home Chimes (1885-09-26).
 
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ADRIANA: A wretched soul bruised with adversity
We bid be quiet when we hear it cry,
But were we burdened with like weight of pain,
As much or more we should ourselves complain.

Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Comedy of Errors, Act 2, sc. 1, l. 34ff (2.1.34-37) (1594)
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In great actions men show themselves as they ought to be, in small actions as they are.

[Dans les grandes choses, les hommes se montrent comme il leur convient de se montrer; dans les petites, ils se montrent comme ils sont.]

Nicolas Chamfort
Nicolas Chamfort (1741-1794) French writer, epigrammist (b. Nicolas-Sébastien Roch)
Products of Perfected Civilization [Produits de la Civilisation Perfectionée], Part 1 “Maxims and Thoughts [Maximes et Pensées],” ch. 1, ¶ 52 (1795) [tr. Hutchinson (1902), “The Cynic’s Breviary”]
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(Source (French)). Alternate translations:

In great matters men show themselves as they ought; in little, as they are.
[tr. Mathers (1926)]

In affairs of importance, men show themselves at their best advantage; in small matters they are seen as they are.
[tr. Merwin (1969)]

In great things, men show themselves as they want to be seen; and in little ones they show themselves as they are.
[tr. Siniscalchi (1994)]

In important matters, men display themselves as they want to be seen; in minor matters as they really are.
[tr. Parmée (2003), ¶45]

 
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The walls of books around me, dense with the past, formed a kind of insulation against the present world and its dangers. I hated to get up.

ross macdonald
Ross Macdonald (1915-1983) American-Canadian author [pseud. of Kenneth Millar]
The Chill, ch. 8 (Lew Archer) (1963)
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Often misquoted in the third person ("The walls of books around him ...")
 
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So Life’s year begins and closes;
Days, though short’ning, still can shine;
What though youth gave love and roses,
Age still leaves us friends and wine.

Thomas Moore (1779-1852) Irish writer, poet, lyricist
“Spring and Autumn,” ll. 5-8 (1815)
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If well thou hast begun, go on fore-right
It is the end that crowns us, not the fight.

Robert Herrick (1591-1674) English poet
“The End,” Hesperides, # 309 (1648)
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Old wine, and an old friend, are good provisions.

George Herbert (1593-1633) Welsh priest, orator, poet.
Jacula Prudentum, or Outlandish Proverbs, Sentences, &c. (compiler), # 136 (1640 ed.)
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Put not oph till to-morrow what can be enjoyed to-day.

[Put not off till tomorrow what can be enjoyed today.]

Josh Billings (1818-1885) American humorist, aphorist [pseud. of Henry Wheeler Shaw]
Everybody’s Friend, Or; Josh Billing’s Encyclopedia and Proverbial Philosophy of Wit and Humor, ch. 148 “Affurisms: Ink Brats” (1874)
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One should guard against preaching to the young man success in the customary sense as the aim of life. For a successful man is he who receives a great deal from this fellowmen, usually incomparably more than corresponds to his service to them. The value of a man, however, should be seen what he gives. and not in what he is able to receive.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) German-American physicist
Speech (1936-10-15), Convocation of University of New York, Albany [tr. Arronet]
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Collected in "On Education" (1936), Out of My Later Years, ch. 9 (1950).
 
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