The want of logic annoys. Too much logic bores. Life eludes logic, and everything that logic alone constructs remains artificial and forced.
—Andre Gide (French Novelist)
I used to think that a man was sentenced to death or imprisonment because he was guilty; now I know that he is found guilty because he is disliked.
—Lu Xun (Chinese Writer)
Christians have oppressed Jews, Moslems, Buddhists, Pagans, and each other throughout their centuries of power, preaching religious intolerance as the word of Jehovah whenever they had the military, political, or economic power to make it stick — and then piously preaching brotherhood, peace, and toleration when they didn’t.
—Isaac Bonewits (American Neopagan)
No doubt the reason is that character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.
—Helen Keller (American Author)
The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows.
—Aristotle Onassis (Greek Shipping Magnate)
The travel writer seeks the world we have lost—the lost valleys of the imagination.
—Alexander Claud Cockburn (Irish American Journalist)
We can’t all be stars because someone has to sit on the curb and clap as I go by.
—Sebastian Horsley (English Painter, Author)
Deliberation is the work of many men. Action, of one alone.
—Charles de Gaulle (French General, Statesman)
The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing.
—Jean-Baptiste Colbert (French Statesman)
Defer not till tomorrow to be wise. Tomorrow’s sun to thee may never rise.
—William Congreve (English Dramatist)
Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.
—Octavio Paz (Mexican Poet, Diplomat)
We are firm believers in the maxim that, for all right judgment of any man or thing, it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Historian, Essayist)
Now it is a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it.
—W. Somerset Maugham (British Novelist)
One day, when spring has gone and youth has fled,
The Maiden and the flowers will both be dead.
—Cao Xueqin (Chinese Writer)
