"...an actor who has played his part in one scene, and who takes his place
among the audience ‘til it is time for him to go upon the stage again, and
quietly looks on at whatever may happen ..." Schopenhauer, describing everyday
life, in The World As Will and Idea, 1844; p 47 of The Philosophy of Schopenhauer,
edited by Irwin Edman, 1928
"A bad neighbor is a misfortune, as much as a good one is a great blessing."
Hesiod, The Theogony, Bk I, 346, 700 BC
“A fanatic is one who has redoubled his energies after forgetting his aim.”
Santayana (approximate quote)
"A fool uttereth all his mind." Bible, Proverbs
"A good death does honor to a whole life." Petrarch, ca 1350 AD
"A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg." Samuel Butler, Life and
Habit, 1877
"A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step." Lao-tzu, The
Way of Lao-tzu, before 531 BC
"A man can believe a considerable deal of rubbish, and yet go about his daily
work in a rational and cheerful manner." Norman Douglas
"A man can surely do what he wills to do, but he cannot determine what he
wills." Arthur Schopenhauer
“A man finds himself, to his great astonishment, suddenly existing, after
thousands and thousands of years of non-existence: he lives for a little
while; and then, again, comes an equally long period when he must exist no
more.” Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism
"A man he seems of cheerful yesterdays, and confident tomorrows." William
Wordsworth, The Excursion, 1814
"A man is no prophet in his own country." Anonymous
“A man left the old world to come to America. After some years the man returned
home disenchanted. ‘What's wrong?’ asked his friends. Weren't the streets
of America paved with gold bricks?’ ‘Yes they were,’ answers the returnee,
‘but no one told me you had to bend over to pick them up." Anonymous
"A man must have his faults." Gaius Petronius, ca 50 AD
"A man must make his opportunity, as oft as find it." Francis Bacon, The
Advancement of Learning, 1605
"A man should be mourned at his birth, not at his death." Charles de Secondat,
Letters Persanes, 1721
"A man's character is his fate." Heralitus, before 480 BC
"A man's homeland is wherever he prospers." Aristophanes, Plutus, 388 BC
"A man's manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait." Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe, Proverbs in Prose, 1803
"A mighty pain to love it is, and ‘tis a pain that pain to miss; but of all
pains, the greatest pain, it is to love, but love in vain." Abraham Cowley,
Anacreon, 1656
"A millionaire who commissioned masterpieces to burn would find (few takers)...
Every sort of artist demands human response." H. G. Wells, Country of the
Blind and Other Short Stories, Intro, 1913
"A mind not to be changed by place or time. The mind is its own place, and
in itself can make a heav'n of hell, a hell in heav'n." John Milton, Paradise
Lost,1667
"A prudent (grateful) man will think more important what fate has conceded
to him than what it has denied." Francis Bacon
"A shipwrecked sailor on this coast bids you set sail; Full many a gallant
ship, ere we were lost, weathered the gale." Greek anthology
“A strange mystery it is that Nature, omnipotent but blind, in the revolution
of her secular hurryings through the abyss of space, has brought forth at
last a child, subject still to her power, but gifted with sight, with knowledge
of good and evil, with the capacity of judging all the works of this unthinking
Mother.” Bertrand Russell, “A Free Man’s Worship,” 1903
"A sure way to arouse love is to love very little yourself." Francois de
la Rochefoucauld
"A useless life is an early death." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Iphigenia
in Tauris, 1787
"A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds." Francis Bacon
"A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits." Alexander Pope, The Dunciad,
1727
"A woman drove me to drink and I never even had the courtesy to thank her."
W. C. Fields
"A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle." Gloria Steinem
"Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind
blows out candles and fans fire." Francois Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Reflections;
or, Sentences and Moral Maxims, 1678
"Accuse not Nature, she hath done her part; do thou but thine." John Milton,
Paradise Lost, 1667
"Adversity introduces a man to himself." Anonymous
"Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend; Before we too into the Dust
descend." Omar Khayyam, The Rubaiyat, 1859, Edward FitzGerald, translator
"Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life." George
Bernard Shaw
"Alcohol is the cause and solution to all life's problems." Dan Castellaneta,
as Homer Simpson
"All books are divisible into two classes: the books of the hour, and the
books of all time." John Ruslin, Of Kings' Treasuries, 1865
"All great truths begin as blasphemies." George Bernard Shaw
“All the noonday brightness of human genius is destined to extinction in
the vast death of the solar system, and the whole temple of Man’s achievements
must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins…” Bertrand
Russell, “A Free Man’s Worship,” 1903
"All this buttoning and unbuttoning." 18th Century suicide note, anonymous
"Although we are mere sojourners on the surface of the planet, chained to
a mere point in space, enduring but for a moment of time, the human mind
is not only enabled to number worlds beyond the unassisted ken of mortal
eye, but to trace the events of indefinite ages before the creation of our
race, and is not even withheld from penetrating into the dark secrets of
the ocean, or the interior of the solid globe; free, like the spirit which
the poet described as animating the universe." Sir Charles Lyell, Principle
of Geology, 1830
“Although we do not in life know where we are going, we experience beyond
a doubt the fatigues of the journey.” Balzac
"Am I a god? I see so clearly!" Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, 1808
"Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that it cannot use it finds despicable."
Joubert
"Among theologians, heretics are those who are not backed with a sufficient
array of battalions to render them orthodox." Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary,
1764
"An expert is a man who doesn't make the slightest error on the road to the
Grand Illusion." Marshall McLuhan
"An optimist thinks that this is the best possible world. A pessimist fears
that this is true." Anonymous
"An undertow of pessimism seemed to be dragging the finest, and once the
most fervent, souls into a maelstrom of cynicism and despair. Everything
had been tried, the most superhuman efforts had been made; but every effort
had failed. There was hardly anything left to do, except perhaps, if one
could, to eat and drink and be merry while it was day. For the night would
come, after which there would be nothing." Will Durant, describing the temper
of the Twenties, Transition: A Mental Autobiography, New York: Simon and
Shuster, 1927
"And, dying, bless the hand that gave the blow." John Dryden, Absalom and
Achitophel, 1680
"Anacharsis laughed at him [Solon] for imagining [that] the dishonesty and
covetousness of his countrymen could be restrained by written laws, which
were like spiders' webs, and would catch, it is true, the weak and poor,
but be broken by the mighty and rich." Anacharsis, 600 BC
"And as the smart ship grew; In stature, grace, and hue; In shadowy silent
distance grew the Iceberg too." Thomas Hardy, The Convergence of the Twain
(Lines on the Loss of the Titanic), 1912
"And this, too, shall pass away." Quoted by Abraham Lincoln, attributed to
wise men counseling a Chinese monarch, 1859
“And though we are hemmed into this narrow nook of time, we can see with
the eyes of all those who in any age saw beyond it, sharing eternity with
those who have anywhere or in any century shared it.” Erwin Edman, The Contemporary
and His Soul, 1931
"Are you Robert Redford?" "Only when I'm alone." Pollack, Redford exchange
on a street
"Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women had fewer
teeth than men by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to open her
mouth." Bertrand Russell
"Aristotle was famous for knowing everything. He taught that the brain exists
merely to cool the blood and is not involved in the process of thinking.
This is true only of certain people." Will Cuffy
"As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death."
Leonardo de Vinci, ca 1510
"As long as I count the votes, what are you going to do about it?" Tammany
Hall boss William Marcy Tweed
"As to the common people, ... one has to be hard with them and see that they
do their work and that under the threat of the sword and the law they comply
with the observance of piety, just as you chain up wild beasts. All our experience
with history should teach us, when we look back, how badly human wisdom is
betrayed when it relies on itself. Reason is the greatest enemy that faith
has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but -- more frequently
than not -- struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all
that emanates from God. Reason should be destroyed in all Christians. Reason
is the Devil's greatest whore; by nature and manner of being she is a noxious
whore; she is a prostitute, the Devil's appointed whore; whore eaten by scab
and leprosy who ought to be trodden under foot and destroyed, she and her
wisdom ... Throw dung in her face to make her ugly. She is and she ought
to be drowned in baptism... She would deserve, the wretch, to be banished
to the filthiest place in the house, to the closets." Martin Luther, Erlangen
Edition v. 16, pp. 142-14
"At thirty, a man suspects himself a fool; Knows it at forty, and reforms
his plan; At fifty chides his infamous delay; Pushes his purpose to resolve;
In all the magnanimity of thought Resolves, and re-resolves; then dies the
same." Edward Young, Night Thoughts, 1742
"Awake, arise, or be forever fallen!" John Milton, Paradise Lost, 1667
"Be good and you will be lonesome." Mark Twain, Following the Equator, Pudd'nhead
Wilson's New Calendar, 1897
"Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the
old aside." Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, 1711
"Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors and miss."
Lazarus Long, Time Enough for Love
"Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks." William Shakespeare, Hamlet,
1601
"Beggars mounted run their horse to death." William Shakespeare, King Henry
the Sixth, 1591
“Believing is seeing.” Robert Thurman
"Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian." Herman Melville,
Moby Dick
"Beware the fury of a patient man." John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel,
1680
“Blasphemy is a victimless crime.” Bumper sticker
"Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed"
Alexander Pope, Letter to Fortescue, 1725
"Boys flying kites pull in their white winged birds, but you can’t do that
when you are flying words; Thought unexpressed may sometimes fall back dead;
but God himself can’t kill them when they are said." 19th Century, William
Carleton (restatement of quote by Horace, 20 BC, “Once a word…”)
"Brief and powerless is Man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure
doom falls pitiless and dark. Blind to good and evil, reckless of destruction,
omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way; for Man, condemned today to
lose his dearest, tomorrow himself to pass through the gate of darkness,
it remains only to cherish, ere yet the blow falls, the lofty thoughts that
ennoble his little day; disdaining the coward terrors of the slave of Fate,
to worship at the shrine that his own hands have built; undismayed by the
empire of chance, to preserve a mind free from the wanton tyranny that rules
his outward life; proudly defiant of the irresistible forces that tolerate,
for a moment, his knowledge and his condemnation, to sustain alone, a weary
but unyielding Atlas, the world that his own ideals have fashioned despite
the trampling march of unconscious power." Bertrand Russell, “A Free Man’s
Worship,” 1903
"But in deed, a friend is never known till a man have need." John Heywood,
ca 1560 AD
"But man, proud man, drest in a little authority, most ignorant of what he's
most assur'd, his glassy essence, like an angry ape, plays such fantastic
tricks before high heaven, as make the angels weep." William Shakespeare,
Measure for Measure, 1604
"But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all
it wants, is the liberty of appearing." Thomas Paine
"Cease to ask what the morrow will bring forth, and set down as gain each
day that Fortune grants. …Seize the day, put no trust in the morrow." Horace,
Odes, ca 20 BC
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