“Whenever you observe an animal closely, you feel as if a human being sitting inside were making fun of you.” — Elias Canetti

Proverbs from around the world:

• “Opportunities come but do not linger.” — Nepalese
• “If you buy what you don’t need, you steal from yourself.” — Swedish
• “Happy nations have no history.” — Belgian
• “An old error has more friends than a new truth.” — Danish
• “Nothing is difficult if you’re used to it.” — Indonesian
• “The one being carried does not realize how far away the town is.” — Nigerian
• “Men make laws; women make morals.” — French
• “If you are afraid of something, you give it power over you.” — Moroccan
• “You can’t sew buttons on your neighbor’s mouth.” — Russian
• “Do good and forget it; do ill and remember it.” — Maltese
• “Not to know is bad, not to want to know is worse.” — Gambian
• “There are a thousand roads to every wrong.” — Polish
• “Virtue is not knowing but doing.” — Japanese
• “People show their character by what they laugh at.” — German
• “That which is a sin in others is a virtue in ourselves.” — Peruvian
• “The new boat will find the old stones.” — Estonian
• “The talkers aren’t strong; the strong don’t talk.” — Burmese
• “Pride and dignity would belong to women if only men would leave them alone.” — Egyptian

Sydney Smith said that Henry Luttrell’s idea of heaven was eating pâté de foie gras to the sound of trumpets.

“My idea of paradise is a perfect automobile going thirty miles an hour on a smooth road to a twelfth-century cathedral.” — Henry Adams

“Perhaps in the next eggzi stens you and I and My lady may be able to sit for placid hours under a lotus tree a eating of ice creams and pelican pie with our feet in a hazure coloured stream and with the birds and beasts of Paradise a sporting around us.” — Edward Lear, letter to Chichester Fortescue, Aug. 16, 1869

“He [Boni de Castellane] once stated that his idea of heaven on earth was to live in a palace whose furnishings and decor would be in a continual state of change and replacement, while outside in formal gardens would be rare fountains and ancient statues, also being constantly moved about.” — Cornelia Otis Skinner, Elegant Wits and Grand Horizontals, 1962

“Many years before, it is true, on a visit to the poet laureate, Alfred Austin, as they sat with others on the lawn in the afternoon, it was suggested that each person should tell his idea of heaven: ‘Austin’s idea was to sit … in a garden, and while he sat to receive constant telegrams announcing alternately a British victory by sea and a British victory by land’; ‘mine’, said Blunt, ‘was to be laid out to sleep in a garden, with running water near, and so to sleep for a hundred thousand years, then to be woke by a bird singing, and to call out to the person one loved best, “Are you there?” and for her to answer, “Yes, are you?” and so turn round and go to sleep again for another hundred thousand years’.” — Edith Finch, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 1938

See Writers’ Fancies.

“Gambling promises the poor what Property performs for the rich: something for nothing.” — Shaw