“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
“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
“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
“Philosophy is the art of asking questions that come naturally to children using methods that come naturally to lawyers.” — David Hills
“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
“The true delight is in the finding out, rather than in the knowing.” — Isaac Asimov
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
“No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.” — Mary Wollstonecraft
“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
Maxims of La Rochefoucauld:
And “The common Foible of old People who have been handsome, is to forget that they are no longer so.”
“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