“Foreign nations are a contemporaneous posterity.”
— “A forgotten American essayist,” quoted by Brander Matthews in his introduction to The Oxford Book of American Essays, 1914
Quotations
Unquote
“Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to be, when our memory shall have perished. The world is a poor affair if it do not contain matter for investigation for the whole world in every age.” — Seneca
Unquote
“Philosophy is the art of asking questions that come naturally to children using methods that come naturally to lawyers.” — David Hills
Unquote
“It was the irony. It was the same irony that caused me to think, pause, and just inwardly chuckle, just momentarily, that, God, here are two guys further away from home … than two guys had ever been, but there are more people watching us than anybody else has ever watched two people before in history.” — Buzz Aldrin
Unquote
“The true delight is in the finding out, rather than in the knowing.” — Isaac Asimov
Worldly Wisdom
Proverbs from around the world:
Every fire is the same size when it starts. — Seneca, North America
Youth is intoxication without wine; old age, wine without intoxication. — Peru
We cannot love that which we do not know. — Guinea
Second thoughts are best. — Greek
Do not propose to a girl whose home you have not seen. — Yaunde
Silence never makes mistakes. — India
Adversity makes men, prosperity monsters. — France
The threshold is the tallest mountain. — Slovenia
Punishment is a cripple, but it arrives. — Spain
Not the mouse is the thief, but the hole in the wall. — Aramaic
Praise does a wise man good but a fool harm. — Italy
A man does not seek his luck; luck seeks its man. — Turkey
He is young enough who has health, and he is rich enough who has no debts. — Denmark
God gives the wine but not the bottle. — Germany
Money likes to be counted. — Russia
Experience is a comb which nature gives us when we are bald. — China
Unquote
“No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.” — Mary Wollstonecraft
Unquote
“It is always observable that silence propagates itself, and that the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find any thing to say.” — Samuel Johnson
Insights
Maxims of La Rochefoucauld:
- “Jealousy is in some sort rational and just; since it only aims at the Preservation of a Good which belongs, or which we think belongs, to us: Whereas Envy is a Frenzy that cannot bear the Good of others.”
- “Good Sense should be the Test of all Rules, both ancient and modern; whatever is incompatible therewith is false.”
- “Avarice is more opposite to Economy than Liberality.”
- “We ought to be able to answer for our Fortune, to be able to answer for what we shall do.”
- “The most violent Passions have their Intermissions; Vanity only gives us no Respite.”
- “‘Tis more difficult to conceal the Sensations we have, than to feign those we have not.”
- “We should have but little Pleasure were we never to flatter ourselves.”
- “We love much better those, who endeavour to imitate us, than those who strive to equal us. For Imitation is a Sign of Esteem, but Competition of Envy.”
- “Whatever Difference may appear in Men’s Fortunes, there is nevertheless a certain Compensation of Good and Ill that makes all equal.”
And “The common Foible of old People who have been handsome, is to forget that they are no longer so.”
Unquote
“There’s nothing more boring on this earth than to have to read the description of an Italian journey, except maybe to have to write one — and the writer can only make it halfway bearable by speaking as little as possible of Italy itself.” — Heinrich Heine