I don’t need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.
—Plutarch
I don’t need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.
—Plutarch
Wise people, even though all laws were abolished, would still lead the same life.
—Aristophanes
The wicked envy and hate; it is their way of admiring.
—Victor Hugo
Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.
—Albert Camus
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
—Robert E. Howard
The best measure of a man’s honesty isn’t his income tax return. It’s the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.
—Arthur C. Clarke
I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.
—Oscar Wilde
We learn about life not from pluses alone, but from minuses as well.
—Anton Chekov
You cannot teach a crab to walk straight.
—Aristophanes
Laughter would be bereaved if snobbery died.
—Peter Ustinov
We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.
—William James
C’est une maladie naturelle à l’homme de croire qu’il possède la vérité directement … It is a natural illness of man to think that he possesses the truth directly …
—Blaise Pascal
Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.
—Thomas Paine
We have searched the wide world over and not found forgetfulness.
—Fritz Leiber
Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.
—G.K. Chesterton
Quicquid servatur, cupimus magis: ipsaque furem
Cura vocat. Pauci, quod sinit alter, amant.
We covet what is guarded; the very care invokes the thief.
Few love what they may have.
—Ovid
To assert dignity is to lose it.
—Rex Stout
Ignavissimus quisque, et ut res docuit, in periculo non ausurus, nimis verbis et lingua feroces. Every recreant who proved his timidity in the hour of danger, was afterwards boldest in words and tongue.
—Tacitus
Hatred grows into insolence when we desire to excel the rest of mankind and imagine we do not belong to the common lot.
—John Calvin
Good breeding doesn’t mean that you won’t spill sauce on the tablecloth, but that you won’t notice when someone else does.
—Anton Chekhov
The man who esteems himself as he ought, and no more than he ought, seldom fails to obtain from other people all the esteem that he himself thinks due. He desires no more than is due to him, and he rests upon it with complete satisfaction.
—Adam Smith
Gratus animus est una virtus non solum maxima, sed etiam mater virtutum omnium reliquarum. A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue, but the parent of all the other virtues.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero
Weakness is not treachery, but it fulfils all its functions.
—Wilhelm II, German Emperor
Forgive me my nonsense as I also forgive the nonsense of those who think they talk sense.
—Robert Frost
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
—T. S. Eliot