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A quotation from Steinbeck

In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I just choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to our world.

John Steinbeck (1902-1968) American writer
East of Eden, ch. 34 (1952)


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A quotation from Josh Billings

I am allwuss more than haff afraid ov the man, who kant talk 5 minnitts with me, on enny subjekt, without expressing grate anxiety about my soul.
 
[I am always more than half afraid of the man who can’t talk five minutes with me, on any subject, without expressing great anxiety about my soul.]

Josh Billings (1818-1885) American humorist, aphorist [pseud. of Henry Wheeler Shaw]
Josh Billings’ Farmer’s Allminax, 1876-07 (1876 ed.)


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A quotation from Wallace Stegner

Order is indeed the dream of man, but chaos, which is only another word for dumb, blind, witless chance, is still the law of nature.

Wallace Stegner (1909-1993) American novelist
Crossing to Safety, ch. 13 (1987)


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A quotation from Andrew Oliver

Politics is the most hazardous of all professions. There is not another in which a man can hope to do so much good to his fellow creatures; neither is there any in which by a mere loss of nerve he may do such widespread harm. Nor is there another in which he may so easily lose his own soul; nor is there another in which a positive and strict veracity is so difficult. But danger is the inseparable companion of honor. With all the temptations and degradations that beset it, politics is still the noblest career any man can choose.

Andrew Oliver (1706-1774) American Colonial merchant, politician, government official
Speech (1774?)


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A quotation from Olivia Butler

Wishful thinking is no more help in predicting the future than fear, superstition or depression.

Octavia Butler (1947-2006) American writer
Essay (2000-05), “A Few Rules for Predicting the Future,” Essence Magazine


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A quotation from Olivia Butler

Wishful thinking is no more help in predicting the future than fear, superstition or depression.

Octavia Butler (1947-2006) American writer
Essay (2000-05), “A Few Rules for Predicting the Future,” Essence Magazine


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A quotation from Baltasar Gracian

A fountain gets muddy with but little stirring up, and does not get clear by our meddling with it but by our leaving it alone. The best remedy for disturbances is to let them run their course, for so they quiet down.
 
[Una fuente con poca inquietud se enturbia, ni se volverá a serenar procurándolo, sino dejándola. No hay mejor remedio de los desconciertos que dejarlos correr, que así caen de sí propios.]

Baltasar Gracián y Morales (1601-1658) Spanish Jesuit priest, writer, philosopher
The Art of Worldly Wisdom [Oráculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia], § 138 (1647) [tr. Jacobs (1892)]


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A quotation from Hugo

It was said of him that he had once been for a short time in Bedlam; they had done him the honour to take him for a madman, but had set him free on discovering that he was only a poet.
 
[On contait de lui qu’il avait été jadis un peu enfermé à Bedlam ; on lui avait fait l’honneur de le prendre pour un insensé, mais on l’avait relâché, s’apercevant qu’il n’était qu’un poëte.]

Victor Hugo (1802-1885) French writer
The Man Who Laughs [L’Homme qui rit; The Laughing Man; By Order of the King], Part 1, Book 0, ch. 1 (1.0.1) (1869) [tr. Unknown (1869)]


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A quotation from Jean Kerr

Marrying a man is like buying something you’ve been admiring for a long time in a shop window. You may love it when you get it home, but it doesn’t always go with everything else in the house.

Jean Kerr (1922-2003) American author and playwright [b. Bridget Jean Collins]
Essay (1959-03), “The Ten Worst Things About a Man,” McCall’s, Vol. 87, No. 6


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A quotation from Richard Steele

It was very prettily said, that we may learn the little value of fortune by the persons on whom Heaven is pleased to bestow it.

Richard Steele (1672-1729) Anglo-Irish writer, journalist, playwright, politician
Essay (1710-07-27), The Tatler, No. 203


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A quotation from Voltaire

POMPEY: It is vain for the coward to fly; death follows close behind;
   It is only by defying it that the brave escape.
 
[POMPEE: Le lâche fuit en vain; la mort vole à sa suite:
   C’est en la défiant que le brave l’évite.]

Voltaire (1694-1778) French writer [pseud. of Francois-Marie Arouet]
Le Triumvirat [The Triumvirate], Act 4, sc. 7 (1763)


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A quotation from Russell Shorto

If the West is heading toward some kind of crisis, it’s worth asking ourselves a few basic questions. Modern society as we normally define it — a secular culture built around tolerance, reason, and democratic values — occupies a rather small portion of the world, and there are signs that it is shrinking. Is modernity the inexorable force of progress that we tend to assume? Is it a mere moment of human history that is fast fading? If it is something to value, how can we rediscover it, separate the good and the bad in it, make it relevant and vital?

Russell Shorto (b. 1959) American author, historian, journalist
Descartes’ Bones, Preface (2008)


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A quotation from Terry Pratchett

Not that he had anything against belief. People needed to believe in gods, if only because it was so hard to believe in people.

Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Discworld, Book 7, Pyramids (1989)


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A quotation from La Rochefoucauld

We easily forget our faults when they are known only to ourselves.
 
[Nous oublions aisément nos fautes lorsqu’elles ne sont sues que de nous.]

François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) French epigrammatist, memoirist, noble
Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales [Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims], ¶196 (1665-1678) [tr. Stevens (1939)]


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A quotation from Samuel Johnson

   One cause which is not always observed of the insufficiency of riches is, that they very seldom make their owner rich. To be rich is to have more than is desired, and more than is wanted; to have something which may be spent without reluctance, and scattered without care, with which the sudden demands of desire may be gratified, the casual freaks of fancy indulged, the unexpected opportunities of benevolence improved.
   Avarice is always poor, but poor by her own fault.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
Essay (1759-09-08), The Idler, No. 73


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A quotation from Robert Ingersoll

All the martyrs in the history of the world are not sufficient to establish the correctness of an opinion. Martyrdom, as a rule, establishes the sincerity of the martyr, — never the correctness of his thought. Things are true or false in themselves. Truth cannot be affected by opinions; it cannot be changed, established, or affected by martyrdom. An error cannot be believed sincerely enough to make it a truth.

Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899) American lawyer, freethinker, orator
Lecture (1881-05-01) “The Great Infidels,” Booth’s Theater, New York


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A quotation from Adlai Stevenson

If I were to attempt to put my political philosophy tonight into a single phrase, it would be this: Trust the people. Trust their good sense, their decency, their fortitude, their faith. Trust them with the facts. Trust them with the great decisions. And fix as our guiding star the passion to create a society where people can fulfill their own best selves — where no American is held down by race or color, by worldly condition or social status, from gaining what his character earns him as an American citizen, as a human being and as a child of God.

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) American diplomat, statesman
Speech (1956-09-13), “Democratic and Republican Administrations,” Pennsylvania Farm Show, Harrisburg


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A quotation from Maugham

For the complete life, the perfect pattern, includes old age as well as youth and maturity. The beauty of the morning and the radiance of noon are good, but it would be a very silly person who drew the curtains and turned on the light in order to shut out the tranquility of the evening. Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.

W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) English novelist and playwright [William Somerset Maugham]
The Summing Up, ch. 73 (1938)


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A quotation from Twain

Custom is custom; it is built of brass, boiler iron, granite; facts, reasonings, arguments have no more effect upon it than the idle winds have upon Gibraltar.

Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Essay (1906), “The Gorky Incident,” Letters from the Earth (c. 1909; pub. 1962) [ed. DeVoto (1939)]

Mark Twain quote about custom


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A quotation from Robert Louis Stevenson

No considerate man can approach marriage without deep concern. I, he will think, who have made hitherto so poor a business of my own life, am now about to embrace the responsibility of another’s. Henceforth, there shall be two to suffer from my faults; and that other is the one whom I most desire to shield from suffering.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
Essay (1880-01/02?), “Reflections and Remarks on Human Life,” § 10.1 “Marriage”


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A quotation from Horace

But like a general, a host displays
his genius best under disaster.
 
[Sed convivatoris uti ducis ingenium res
Adversae nudare solent, celare secundae.]

Horace (65–8 BC) Roman poet, satirist, soldier, politician [Quintus Horatius Flaccus]
Satires [Saturae, Sermones], Book 2, # 8 “Ut Nasidieni,” l. 73ff (2.8.73-74) (30 BC) [tr. Matthews (2002)]

But like a general, a host displays his genius best under disaster. - Horace


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A quotation from Teddy Roosevelt

Indeed, the doctrine that “To the victor belong the spoils,” the cynical battle-cry of the spoils politician in America for the sixty years preceding my own entrance into public life, is so nakedly vicious that few right-thinking men of trained mind defend it. To appoint, promote, reduce, and expel from the public service, letter-carriers, stenographers, women typewriters, clerks, because of the politics of themselves or their friends, without regard to their own service, is, from the standpoint of the people at large, as foolish and degrading as it is wicked.

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901–1909)
Autobiography, ch. 5 “Applied Idealism” (1913)


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A quotation from Thomas Carlyle

Everywhere in life, the true question is not what we gain, but what we do.

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Scottish essayist and historian
Essay (1828-05), “Goethe’s Helena,” Foreign Review, Vol. 1, No. 2, Article 5


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A quotation from Josh Billings

I aint no disgrace for a man to fall, but to lay thare, and grunt, iz.
 
[It ain’t no disgrace for a man to fall, but to lay there, and grunt, is.]

Josh Billings (1818-1885) American humorist, aphorist [pseud. of Henry Wheeler Shaw]
Josh Billings’ Farmer’s Allminax, 1876-06 (1876 ed.)


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A quotation from Cicero

MARCUS: How few philosophers are to be found who are such in character, so ordered in soul and in life, as reason demands; who regard their teaching not as a display of knowledge, but as the rule of life; who obey themselves, and submit to their own decrees!
 
[Quotus enim quisque philosophorum invenitur, qui sit ita moratus, ita animo ac vita constitutus, ut ratio postulat? qui disciplinam suam non ostentationem scientiae, sed legem vitae putet? qui obtemperet ipse sibi et decretis suis pareat?]

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) Roman orator, statesman, philosopher
Tusculan Disputations [Tusculanae Disputationes], Book 2, ch. 4 (2.4) / sec. 11 (2.11) [Marcus] (45 BC) [tr. Peabody (1886)]


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A quotation from Bill Watterson

   CALVIN: Bugs fly in such crazy loops and zigzags. I wonder why they don’t get dizzy and barf.
   HOBBES: Maybe they do!
   CALVIN: Eww, gross! Ha ha ha! But then why would they keep flying that way?
   HOBBES: Maybe bugs like to barf!
   CALVIN: Ewwww! They would!! Ha ha ha ha! Blaugh!
   CALVIN: I tell you, Hobbes, it’s great to have a friend who appreciates an earnest discussion of ideas.

Bill Watterson (b. 1958) American cartoonist
Calvin and Hobbes (1992-07-14)

Calvin and Hobbes (1992-07-14)


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A quotation from Ambrose Bierce

DESERVE, n. The quality of being entitled to what somebody else obtains.

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) American writer and journalist
“Deserve,” “Devil’s Dictionary” column, San Francisco Wasp (1882-03-03)


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A quotation from Thoreau

Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost.

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) American philosopher and writer
Walden; or, Life in the Woods, ch. 1 “Economy” (1854)


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A quotation from Montaigne

No wind serves him who has no port of destination.
 
[Nul vent fait pour celuy qui n’a point de port destiné.]

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) French essayist
Essays, Book 2, ch. 1 (2.1), “Of the Inconsistency of Our Actions [De l’inconstance de nos actions]” (1572) [tr. Zeitlin (1934)]


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