The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself.
Thales of Miletus c. 624 - c. 546 BC
c. 624 - c. 546 BC
Entire Collection
The universe ought to be presumed too vast to have any character.
1839 - 1914
‘The Order of Nature’, Popular Science Monthly (1878)
A reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure until he knows whether the writer of it be a black man or a fair man, of a mild or choleric disposition, married or a bachelor.
Joseph Addison 1672 - 1719
1672 - 1719
I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.
H. L. Mencken 1880 - 1956
1880 - 1956
The average, healthy, well-adjusted adult gets up at seven-thirty in the morning feeling just plain terrible.
Jean Kerr 1922 - 2003
1922 - 2003
The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you've got it made.
Jean Giraudoux 1882 - 1944
1882 - 1944
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
Thomas Jefferson 1743 - 1826
1743 - 1826
Love comes from blindness, Friendship from knowledge.
Roger de Rabutin, comte de Bussy 1618 - 1693
1618 - 1693
Love is only one of many passions.
Samuel Johnson 1709 - 1784
1709 - 1784
The more you know the harder you will find it to make up your mind.
born 1975
Lyric : The Fence
We are not interested in the fact that the brain has the consistency of cold porridge.
Alan Turing 1912 - 1954
1912 - 1954
The normal is that which nobody quite is. If you listen to seemingly dull people very closely, you'll see that they're all mad in different and interesting ways, and are merely struggling to hide it.
1932 - 2007
Masks of the Illuminati
The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again; and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered.
Edmund Burke 1729 - 1797
1729 - 1797
Fear is the foundation of most governments.
John Adams 1735 - 1826
1735 - 1826
Two hours of writing fiction leaves this writer completely drained. For those two hours he has been in a different place with totally different people.
Roald Dahl 1916 - 1990
1916 - 1990
Innumerable twinkling of the waves of the sea.
Aeschylus c. 525 - c. 455 BC
Prometheus Bound, ll. 89-90; whether Aeschylus wrote the play is disputed. Greek: ποντίων τε κυμάτων ἀνήριθμον γέλασμα.
c. 525 - c. 455 BC
Prometheus Bound, ll. 89-90; whether Aeschylus wrote the play is disputed.
Greek: ποντίων τε κυμάτων ἀνήριθμον γέλασμα.
Auctioneer, n. The man who proclaims with a hammer that he has picked a pocket with his tongue.
Ambrose Bierce 1842 - 1914
Bierce, A. (1906). The cynic's word book. New York: Doubleday, Page, & Company.
1842 - 1914
Bierce, A. (1906). The cynic's word book. New York: Doubleday, Page, & Company.
My point is not that religion itself is the motivation for wars, murders and terrorist attacks, but that religion is the principal label, and the most dangerous one, by which a ‘they’ as opposed to a ‘we’ can be identified at all.
born 1941
A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, lie, Science, and Love
It means nothing to me. I have no opinion about it, and I don't care.
1881 - 1973
On the first moon landing
Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.
George Eliot 1819 - 1880
1819 - 1880
One's thoughts turn towards Hope.
1452 - 1519
Next to a sketch of a bird in a cage.
No, it did lots of other things too.
1882 - 1941
Response on being asked ‘May I kiss the hand that wrote Ulysses?’
Measure your mind’s height by the shade it casts!
Robert Browning 1812 - 1889
1812 - 1889
The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly.
Julian Barnes born 1946
born 1946
One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.
Leonardo da Vinci 1452 - 1519
1452 - 1519