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Author Cloud
Adams, John • Aristotle • Bacon, Francis • Bible • Bierce, Ambrose • Billings, Josh • Butcher, Jim • Chesterfield (Lord) • Chesterton, Gilbert Keith • Churchill, Winston • Cicero, Marcus Tullius • Einstein, Albert • Eisenhower, Dwight David • Emerson, Ralph Waldo • Franklin, Benjamin • Fuller, Thomas (1654) • Gaiman, Neil • Galbraith, John Kenneth • Gandhi, Mohandas • Hazlitt, William • Heinlein, Robert A. • Hoffer, Eric • Homer • Huxley, Aldous • Ingersoll, Robert Green • Jefferson, Thomas • Johnson, Lyndon • Johnson, Samuel • Kennedy, John F. • King, Martin Luther • La Rochefoucauld, Francois • Lewis, C.S. • Lincoln, Abraham • Mencken, H.L. • Orwell, George • Pratchett, Terry • Roosevelt, Eleanor • Roosevelt, Theodore • Russell, Bertrand • Seneca the Younger • Shakespeare, William • Shaw, George Bernard • Sophocles • Stevenson, Robert Louis • Twain, Mark- Only the 45 most quoted authors are shown above. Full author list.
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action age America beauty belief change character death democracy education ego error evil faith fear freedom future God government happiness history human nature humanity integrity leadership liberty life love morality perspective politics power pride progress reality religion science society success truth virtue war wealth wisdom writing- I've been adding topics since 2014, so not all quotes have been given one. Full topic list.
Popular Quotables
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Quotations about familiarity
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
What a comfort one familiar face is in a howling wilderness of strangers!
An old belief is like an old shoe. We so value its comfort that we fail to notice the hole in it.
Robert Brault (b. c. 1945) American aphorist, programmer
(Attributed)
The first impression is readily received. We are so constituted that we believe the most incredible things; and, once they are engraved upon the memory, woe to him who would endeavor to efface them.
[Der erste Eindruck findet uns willig, und der Mensch ist gemacht, daß man ihn das Abenteuerlichste überreden kann; das haftet aber auch gleich so fest, und wehe dem, der es wieder auskratzen und austilgen will!]
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) German poet, statesman, scientist
The Sorrows of Young Werther, Book 1, “August 15” (1774) [tr. Boylan]
(Source)
Alt. trans.:
- "... woe to him who would endeavor to erase them!" [tr. Lange, Ryan]
- "The first impression finds us receptive, and man is so made that he can be persuaded by the most outlandish things; but it strikes root so immediately that woe to him who tries to scratch it out and eradicate it!" [tr. Pike (2004)]
- Original German.
Familiarity breeds contempt, while rarity wins admiration.
[Parit enim conversatio contemptum; raritas conciliat admirationem.]
Apuleius (c. 124 - c. 170 AD) Numidian writer, philosopher, rhetorician [Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis]
On the God of Socrates [De Deo Socratis], ch. 4 [tr. Bohn’s (1853)]
Discussing why the gods do not mingle with humanity. Alt. trans.: The first part of the phrase is also used as the moral in the traditional English translation of Aesop's "The Fox and the Lion."
Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.
[Pour qu’une chose soit intéressante, il suffit de la regarder longtemps.]
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) French writer, novelist
Letter to Alfred Le Poittevin (16 Sep 1845)
(Source)
Alt. trans.: "To make something interesting, just look at it for a long time."
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety; other women cloy
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Antony and Cleopatra, Act 2, sc. 2, l. 271 [Enobarbus] (1607)
(Source)
Ever since I had dinner with Lou Reed I’ve tried to avoid meeting the people who would make me feel starstruck. It was a great dinner but by the end of it Lou Reed was no longer my hero, and I don’t have many heroes. I resolutely avoided meeting David Bowie, which became harder when I became friends with Duncan Jones, his son, and then got even harder when I moved to Woodstock and he lived around the corner. But I love the fact that the Bowie that I have is the Bowie in my head: a strange, evolving, absolutely fictional Bowie who became my hero when I was 11.
Sit at the feet of the masters long enough, and they’ll start to smell.
(Other Authors and Sources)
Sauget’s Law of Education
(Source)
Attributed to John Sauget of Urbana, Ill., in Paul Dickson, The Official Rules, "Revised Proverbs" (1978).
No man is a hero to his valet.
Anne-Marie Bigot de Cornuel (1605-1694) French wit and aphorist
Lettres de Mlle Aïssé, 12.13 (1728)
See Goethe.
Admiration is a very short-lived passion, that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
The Spectator #256 (24 Dec 1711)
All the works of Nature are Miracles, and nothing makes them appear otherwise but our Familiarity with them.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902) English novelist, satirist, scholar
Prose Observations. “Nature” [ed. de Quehen (1979)]
Choose the best life; for habit will make it pleasant.
Epictetus (c.55-c.135) Greek (Phrygian) Stoic philosopher
Fragment 144
Sometimes attributed to Francis Bacon.
Familiarity breeds contempt — and children.
Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Mark Twain’s Notebook, 2 Feb 1894 [ed. Paine (1935)]
He who carves the Buddha never worships him.
(Other Authors and Sources)
Chinese proverb
