A quotation from Samuel Johnson
> To put every man in possession of his own time, and rescue the day from the succession of usurpers, is beyond my power, and beyond my hope. Yet perhaps, some stop might be put to this unmerciful persecution, if all would seriously reflect, that whoever pays a […]
A quotation from Robert Ingersoll
> The doctrine of eternal pain is my trouble with this Christian religion. I reject it on account of its infinite heartlessness.
**Robert Green Ingersoll** (1833-1899) American lawyer, freethinker, orator
Lecture (1884-01-20), “Orthodoxy,” Tabor Opera House […]
A quotation from Dave Barry
> There really _are_ things you can do to keep your body looking healthy and youthful for years to come. But before I discuss these things, I want you to answer the following questions honestly: Are you willing to make the hard sacrifices needed to be _really_ […]
A quotation from Robert Louis Stevenson
> If you adopt an art to be your trade, weed your mind at the outset of all desire of money. What you may decently expect, if you have some talent and much industry, is such an income as a clerk will earn with a tenth or perhaps a twentieth of your […]
A quotation from Herman Hesse
> Now the bourgeois treasures nothing more highly than the self (rudimentary as his may be). And so at the cost of intensity, he achieves his own preservation and security. His harvest is a quiet mind which he prefers to being possessed by God, as he does comfort […]
A quotation from Bertrand Russell
> I think the gist of the matter is that a saint can live without politeness, and indeed that politeness is incompatible with a saintly character. But the man who is always to be sincere must be free from spite and envy and malice and pettiness. Most of us have […]
A quotation from Montaigne
> There is another kind of “glory”: conceiving too high an opinion of our worth. This is an undeserved feeling by which we value ourselves, and that makes us think ourselves different than we are, just as the passion of love lends beauties and graces to the object it […]
A quotation from Eric Hoffer
> The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.
**Eric Hoffer** (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
_Passionate State of Mind_ , Aphorism 280 (1955)
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Absolute Power corrupts absolutely. -- Lord Acton
A quotation from Lord Acton
> I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way against holders of power, increasing as the […]
[Original post on friendica.world]
A quotation from Josh Billings
> It iz one ov the hardest things on earth for a man to learn,—that he plays a third rate game ov whist.
>
> [It is one of the hardest things on earth for a man to learn — that he plays a third-rate game of whist.]
**Josh Billings** (1818-1885) American humorist […]
A quotation from Thomas Carlyle
> Dupes indeed are many: but, of all _dupes_ , there is none so fatally situated as he who lives in undue terror of being duped.
**Thomas Carlyle** (1795-1881) Scottish essayist and historian
Lecture (1840-05-22), “The Hero as King,” Home House, Portman Square […]
A quotation from Ben Franklin
> When the Well’s dry, we know the Worth of Water.
**Benjamin Franklin** (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher, aphorist
_Poor Richard_ (1746 ed.)
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#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd […]
A quotation from Melville
> Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed.
**Herman Melville** (1819-1891) American writer
Story (1854-06), “Poor Man’s Pudding […]
A quotation from Marcus Aurelius
> Wherein, then, is your grievance? You are not ejected from the city [life] by any unjust judge or tyrant, but by the selfsame Nature which brought you into it; just as when an actor is dismissed by the manager who engaged him.
> “But I have played no more […]
A quotation from Bertrand Russell
> Almost everybody is deeply affected when some one he loves suffers from cancer. Most people are moved when they see the sufferings of unknown patients in hospitals. Yet when they read that the death-rate from cancer is such-and-such, they are as a rule only […]
A quotation from James Thurber
> By definition, humor is gentle. The savage, the cruel, the harsh would fall under the heading of wit and/or satire, as the lawyers say. Now, my definitions are these: The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun […]
A quotation from James Howell
> He that gropes in the dark, finds that which he would not.
**James Howell** (c. 1594–1666) Welsh historian and writer
_Paroimiographia [Παροιμιογραφία]: Proverbs, or, Old Sayed Sawes & Adages_, “English Proverbs” (1659)
[compiler]
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A quotation from Einstein
> A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels.
**Albert Einstein** (1879-1955) German-American physicist
Letter (1946-05-25), quoted in “Atomic Education Urged by Einstein,” _New York Times_
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A quotation from Robert Hogan
> There’s a reason narcissists don’t learn from mistakes and that’s because they never get past the first step, which is admitting that they made one. It’s always an assistant’s fault, an adviser’s fault, a lawyer’s fault. Ask them to account for a mistake any […]
A quotation from William Godwin
> As the true object of education is not to render the pupil the mere copy of his preceptor, it is rather to be rejoiced in, than lamented, that various reading should lead him into new trains of thinking.
**William Godwin** (1756-1836) English journalist […]
A quotation from Ambrose Bierce
> BOOK-LEARNING, _n._ The dunce’s derisive term for all knowledge that transcends his own impenitent ignorance.
**Ambrose Bierce** (1842-1914?) American writer and journalist
“Book-learning,” “Devil’s Dictionary” column, San Francisco _Wasp_ (1881-05-14)
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A quotation (probably) from Hannah Arendt
> The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism.
**Hannah Arendt** (1906-1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist
(Attributed)
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A quotation from Eleanor Roosevelt
> One thing life has taught me: if you are interested, you never have to look for new interests. They come to you. They will gravitate as automatically as the needle to the north. Somehow, it is unnecessary, in any cold-blooded sense, to sit down and put your […]
A quotation from The Bible
> The wicked flee when no man pursueth ….
>
> [נָ֣סוּ וְאֵין־רֹדֵ֣ף רָשָׁ֑ע]
**The Bible** (The Old Testament) (14th - 2nd C BC) Judeo-Christian sacred scripture [Tanakh, Hebrew Bible], incl. the Apocrypha (Deuterocanonicals)
Book 20. _Proverbs_ 28: 1 (Prov 28:1) […]
A quotation from Madeleine L'Engle
> When I find myself hotly defending something, when I am, in fact, zealous, it is time for me to step back and examine whatever it is that has me so hot under the collar. Do I think it’s going to threaten my comfortable rut? Make me change and grow? — and […]
A quotation from Christopher Hitchens
> The essence of tyranny is not iron law. It is capricious law.
**Christopher Hitchens** (1949-2011) English intellectual, polemicist, socio-political critic
Essay (2004-02), “I Fought the Law,” _Vanity Fair_
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A quotation from Joseph Addison
> Knowledge is, indeed, that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another. It finishes one half of the human Soul. It makes Being pleasant to us, fills the mind with entertaining views and administers to it a perpetual series of […]
A quotation from Alexander Smith
> To our graves we walk
> In the thick footprints of departed men.
**Alexander Smith** (1830-1867) Scottish poet
“Horton,” ll. 570-571, _City Poems_ (1857)
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A quotation from Euripides
> ÆGEUS: All happiness to you Medea! Between old friends
> There is no better greeting.
>
> [ΑἸΓΕΎΣ: Μήδεια, χαῖρε: τοῦδε γὰρ προοίμιον
> κάλλιον οὐδεὶς οἶδε προσφωνεῖν φίλους.]
**Euripides** (485?-406? BC) Greek tragic dramatist
Medea [Μήδεια], l. 663ff (431 BC) […]
A quotation from Shakespeare
> IAGO: I am one, sir, that comes to tell you your daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs.
**William Shakespeare** (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
_Othello_ , Act 1, sc. 1, l. 129ff (1.1.129-131) (1603)
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