Quote collection
701 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Even in those cities which seem to enjoy the blessings of peace, and where the arts florish, the inhabitants are devoured by envy, cares and anxieties, which are greater plagues than any expirienced in a town when it is under siege."
"We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation."
"How inexpressible is the meanness of being a hypocrite! how horrible is it to be a mischievous and malignant hypocrite."
"There can be no happiness without good health"
"Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause."
"If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated."
"Discord is the great ill of mankind; and tolerance is the only remedy for it."
"Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another."
"Go get yourself crucified and then rise on the third day."
"Indolence is sweet, and its consequences bitter."
"If you are attacked as regards your style, never reply; it is for your work alone to make answer."
"I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?"
"A good imitation is the most perfect originality"
"The history of human opinion is scarcely anything more than the history of human errors."
"History is fables agreed upon."
"The best is the enemy of the good."
"Injustice in the end produces independence."
"What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking."
"I also know that we must cultivate our garden. For when man was put in the Garden of Eden, he was put there ut operaretur eum, to work; which proves that man was not born for rest."
"Minds differ still more than faces."