A quotation from The Epic of Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh, where are you roaming?
You will never find the eternal life
that you seek. When the gods created mankind,
they also created death, and they held back
eternal life for themselves alone.
Humans are born, they live, and then they die,
this is the order that the gods have decreed.
But until the end comes, enjoy your life,
spend it in happiness, not despair.
Savor your food, make each of your days
a delight, bathe and anoint yourself,
wear bright clothes that are sparkling clean,
let music and dancing fill your house,
love the child who holds you by the hand,
and give your wife pleasure in your embrace.
That is the best way for a man to live.

Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 2100–1200 BC) Sumerian myth
Tablet 10, col. 3 [Siduri] [tr. Mitchell (2004)]

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A quotation from Hyman Rickover

I have for some time thought that a few of our present day ills stem from this childish faith in the existence of perfect answers. It requires a degree of maturity to realize that all solutions are partial ones.

Hyman Rickover (1900-1986) American naval engineer, submariner, US Navy Admiral
Speech (1954-03-16), “Administering a Large Military Development Project,” US Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California

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A quotation from Victor Hugo

Men are still men. The despot’s wickedness
Comes of ill teaching, and of power’s excess, —
Comes of the purple he from childhood wears,
Slaves would be tyrants if the chance were theirs.
 
[L’homme est homme toujours; les crimes du despote
Sont faits par sa puissance, ombre où son âme flotte,
Par la pourpre qu’il traîne et dont on le revêt,
Et l’esclave serait tyran s’il le pouvait.]

Victor Hugo (1802-1885) French writer
Poem (1876), “The Vanished City [La Ville Disparue],” Legend of the Ages: New Series [La Légende des siècles: La Nouvelle Série], No. 4 (1877) [tr. Carrington (1885)]

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A quotation from Jean Kerr

Now the thing about having a baby — and I can’t be the first person to have noticed this — is that thereafter you have it.

Jean Kerr (1922-2003) American author and playwright [b. Bridget Jean Collins]
Essay (1957), “Introduction,” Please Don’t Eat the Daisies

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A quotation from Wendell Berry

If you know even as little history as I do, it is hard not to doubt the efficacy of modern war as a solution to any problem except that of retribution — the “justice” of exchanging one damage for another.

Wendell Berry (b. 1934) American farmer, educator, poet, conservationist
Essay (1999), “The Failure of War,” Citizenship Papers (2003)

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A quotation from Joseph Addison

Musick, the greatest Good that Mortals know,
And all of Heav’n we have below.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Poem (1694), “A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day, at Oxford,” st. 3

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A quotation from Bruce Holland Rogers

And so, you see, simplicity
Requires that our lot
Be that we exit, when we must,
With only what we brought.

Bruce Holland Rogers (b. 1958) American author [pseud. Hanovi Braddock]
“A Common Night,” Fantastic Alice (1995) [ed. Margaret Weis]

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A quotation from Shakespeare

HELENA: Things base and vile, holding no quantity,
   Love can transpose to form and dignity.
   Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind;
   And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
   Nor hath Love’s mind of any judgment taste.
   Wings, and no eyes, figure unheedy haste.
   And therefore is Love said to be a child
   Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 1, sc. 1, ll. 238ff (1.1.238-245) (1605)

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A quotation from Adlai Stevenson

There are men among us who use “patriotism” as a club for attacking other Americans. What can we say for the self-styled patriot who thinks that a Negro, a Jew, a Catholic, or a Japanese-American is less an American than he? That betrays the deepest article of our faith, the belief in individual liberty and equality which has always been the heart and soul of the American idea.

Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965) American diplomat, statesman
Speech (1952-08-27), “The Nature of Patriotism,” American Legion Convention, Madison Square Garden, New York City

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A quotation from Thoreau

Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfaction, — a work at which you would not be ashamed to invoke the Muse.

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) American philosopher and writer
Walden; or, Life in the Woods, ch. 18 “Conclusion” (1854)

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A quotation from La Rochefoucauld

Our readiness to think ill of people without sufficiently examining the matter is based on laziness and pride. We want to find people guilty, we don’t want the bother of studying their crimes.
 
[La promptitude à croire le mal, sans l’avoir assez examiné, est un effet de l’orgueil et de la paresse: on veut trouver des coupables, et on ne veut pas se donner la peine d’examiner les crimes.]

François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) French epigrammatist, memoirist, noble
Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales [Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims], ¶267 (1665-1678) [tr. Kronenberger (1959)]

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A quotation from Samuel Johnson

Composition is, for the most part, an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
Essay (1754-03-02), The Adventurer, No. 138

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A quotation from Robert Ingersoll

Does any intelligent man now believe that God made man of dust, and woman of a rib, and put them in a garden, and put a tree in the midst of it? Was there not room outside of the garden to put his tree, if he did not want people to eat his apples?
   If I did not want a man to eat my fruit, I would not put him in my orchard.

Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899) American lawyer, freethinker, orator
Lecture (1884-01-20), “Orthodoxy,” Tabor Opera House, Denver, Colorado

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A quotation from Mark Twain

How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again!

Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Dictation (1906-12-02), The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2 (2013)

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A quotation from C. C. Colton

Power, like the diamond, dazzles the beholder, and also the wearer; it dignifies meanness; it magnifies littleness; to what is contemptible, it gives authority; to what is low, exaltation.

Charles Caleb "C. C." Colton (1780-1832) English cleric, writer, aphorist
Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Vol. 1, § 20 (1820)

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A quotation from Horace

Years foll’wing Years, steal something ev’ry day,
At last they steal us from our selves away;
In one our Frolicks, one Amusements end,
In one a Mistress drops, in one a Friend:
This subtle Thief of Life, this paltry Time,
What will it leave me, if it snatch my Rhime?
 
[Singula de nobis anni praedantur euntes;
eripuere iocos, Venerem, convivia, ludum;
tendunt extorquere poemata: quid faciam vis?]

Horace (65–8 BC) Roman poet, satirist, soldier, politician [Quintus Horatius Flaccus]
Epistles [Epistularum, Letters], Book 2, ep. 2 “To Julius Florus,” l. 55ff (2.2.55-57) (14 BC) [tr. Pope (1737)]

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A quotation from Lincoln

Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you shall allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose, and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect. If to-day he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, “I see no probability of the British invading us”; but he will say to you, “Be silent: I see it if you don’t.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
Letter (1848-02-15) to William H. Herndon

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A quotation from Kit Marlowe

MEPHISTOPHILES: Within the bowels of these elements,
   Where we are tortur’d and remain for ever:
   Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscrib’d
   In one self place; for where we are is hell,
   And where hell is, there must we ever be:
   And, to conclude, when all the world dissolves,
   And every creature shall be purified,
   All places shall be hell that are not heaven.

Christopher "Kit" Marlowe (1564-1593) English dramatist and poet
The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, Act 2, sc. 1 (sc. 5), l. 565ff (1594; 1604 “A” text)

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A quotation from Arthur Conan Doyle

   “You don’t seem to give much thought to the matter in hand,” I said at last, interrupting Holmes’s musical disquisition.
   “No data yet,” he answered. “It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgement.”

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) British writer and physician
Story (1886-04), “A Study in Scarlet,” Part 1, ch. 3, Beeton’s Christmas Annual, Vol. 28 (1887-11-21)

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A quotation from Teddy Roosevelt

I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life. The life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901–1909)
Speech (1899-04-10), “The Strenuous Life,” Hamilton Club, Chicago

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A quotation from Thomas Carlyle

We do not find, of the Christian Religion either, that it always disdained the sword, when once it had got one.

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Scottish essayist and historian
Lecture (1840-05-08), “The Hero as Prophet,” Home House, Portman Square, London

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A quotation from Eric Hoffer

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.

Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
Passionate State of Mind, Aphorism 222 (1955)

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A quotation from Josh Billings

Mankind loves misterys, a hole in the ground excites more wonder than a star up in heaven.
 
[Mankind loves mysteries; a hole in the ground excites more wonder than a star in the heaven.]

Josh Billings (1818-1885) American humorist, aphorist [pseud. of Henry Wheeler Shaw]
Josh Billings’ Farmer’s Allminax, 1871-01 (1871 ed.)

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A quotation from Ben Franklin

Hear Reason, or she’ll make you feel her.

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher, aphorist
Poor Richard (1744 ed.)

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A quotation from Montaigne

I see no marriages where the conjugal compatibility sooner fails than those that we contract upon the account of beauty and amorous desires; there should be more solid and constant foundation, and they should proceed with greater circumspection; this furious ardor is worth nothing.
 
[Je ne voy point de mariages qui faillent plustost, & se troublent, que ceux qui s’acheminent par la beauté, & desirs amoureux : Il y faut des fondemens plus solides, & plus constans, & y marcher d’aguet : cette bouillante allegresse n’y vaut rien.]

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) French essayist
Essays, Book 3, ch. 5 (3.5), “Of Some Verses of Virgil [Sur des vers de Virgile]” (1586) [tr. Cotton/Hazlitt (1877)]

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A quotation from Joseph Conrad

“No,” interrupted the doctor. “There is no peace and no rest in the development of material interests. They have their law, and their justice. But it is founded on expediency, and is inhuman; it is without rectitude, without the continuity and the force that can be found only in moral principle.”

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) Polish-English novelist [b. Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski]
Nostromo, Part 3 “The Lighthouse,” ch. 10 (1904)

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A quotation from Donald Knuth

Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do.

Donald E. Knuth (b. 1938) American computer scientist, mathematician, academic
Essay (1996), “Foreword” to Marko Petkovsek, Herbert Wilf and Doron Zeilberger, A = B (1996)

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A quotation from James Howell

Burn not thy fingers to snuff another man’s candle.

James Howell (c. 1594 - 1666) Welsh historian and writer
Paroimiographia [Παροιμιογραφία], or, Old Sayed Sawes & Adages, “New Sayings” (1659)

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A quotation from Thoreau

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) American philosopher and writer
Walden; or, Life in the Woods, ch. 3 “Reading” (1854)

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A quotation from Franklin Roosevelt

We are a nation of many nationalities, many races, many religions — bound together by a single unity, the unity of freedom and equality. Whoever seeks to set one nationality against another, seeks to degrade all nationalities. Whoever seeks to set one race against another seeks to enslave all races. Whoever seeks to set one religion against another, seeks to destroy all religion.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945) American lawyer, politician, statesman, US President (1933-1945)
Speech (1940-11-01), Campaign Address, Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York

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A quotation from Douglas Adams

Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English author, humorist, screenwriter
Hitchhiker’s Guide No. 1, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, ch. 16 (1979)

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A quotation from Bertrand Russell

The happy man is the man who lives objectively, who has free affections and wide interests, who secures his happiness through these interests and affections and through the fact that they, in turn, make him an object of interest and affection to many others.

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
Conquest of Happiness, Part 2, ch. 17 “The Happy Man” (1930)

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A quotation from Molly Ivins

This has happened before in our history — in fact, it’s a pretty predictable reaction to fear. We get so rattled by some big Scary Thing — communism or crime or drugs or illegal aliens or terrorism — something that scares us so much, we think we can make ourselves safer by giving up some of our freedom. Now, not only does that not hold a drop of water as a logical proposition but it has consistently proved to be an illusion as a practical matter. Empirically, when you make yourself less free, you are not safe, you are just less free.

Molly Ivins (1944-2007) American writer, political columnist [Mary Tyler Ivins]
Bill of Wrongs, Introduction (2007) [with Lou Dubose]

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A quotation from Abraham Lincoln

I must save this government if possible. What I cannot do, of course I will not do; but it may as well be understood, once for all, that I shall not surrender this game leaving any available card unplayed.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
Letter (1862-07-26) to Revardy Johnson

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A quotation from Emerson

With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think to-day in words as hard as cannon-balls and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
Essay (1841), “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series, No. 2

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A quotation from Bill Watterson

HOBBES: Van Gogh would’ve sold more than one painting if he’d put tigers in them.

Bill Watterson (b. 1958) American cartoonist
Calvin and Hobbes (1990-10-14)

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