“It has been said of the Iliad that anyone who starts reading it as history will find that it is full of fiction but, equally, anyone who starts reading it as fiction will find that it is full of history.” — Arnold Toynbee
Quotations
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“Sweet is the remembrance of troubles when you are in safety.” — Euripides
“Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.” — James Thurber
But:
“In every adversity of fortune, to have been happy is the most unhappy kind of misfortune.” — Boethius
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“The light in the world comes principally from two sources, — the sun, and the student’s lamp.” — Christian Nestell Bovee, Intuitions and Summaries of Thought, 1862
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“If I love you, what business is it of yours?” — Goethe
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“Heresy is the side that loses.” — J.V. Fleming
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“Patriotism ruins history.” — Goethe
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“It is most absurdly said, in popular language, of any man, that he is disguised in liquor; for, on the contrary, most men are disguised by sobriety.” — Thomas de Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, 1856
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I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.
— Charles Darwin, letter to Asa Gray, May 22, 1860
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“Foolish man, what do you bemoan, and what do you fear? Wherever you look there is an end of evils. You see that yawning precipice? It leads to liberty. You see that flood, that river, that well? Liberty houses within them. You see that stunted, parched, and sorry tree? From each branch liberty hangs. Your neck, your throat, your heart are all so many ways of escape from slavery … Do you enquire the road to freedom? You shall find it in every vein in your body.” — Seneca
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“I find all books too long.” — Voltaire
“The covers of this book are too far apart.” — Ambrose Bierce
“A big book is a big nuisance.” — Callimachus
“Long books, when read, are usually overpraised, because the reader wants to convince others and himself that he has not wasted his time.” — E.M. Forster
“I made this letter very long, because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter.” — Pascal
“Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is.” — Samuel Johnson