#quotation — Public Fediverse posts

A quotation from La Rochefoucauld

We confess to small faults to create the impression that we have no great ones.
 
[Nous n’avouons de petits défauts que pour persuader que nous n’en avons pas de grands.]

François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680) French epigrammatist, memoirist, noble
Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales [Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims], ¶327 (1665-1678) [tr. Kronenberger (1959)]

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A quotation from Samuel Johnson

He that would pass the latter part of life with honour and decency, must, when he is young, consider that he shall one day be old; and remember, when he is old, that he has once been young.

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
Essay (1750-09-08), The Rambler, No. 50

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A quotation from Robert Ingersoll

If there is a God who will damn his children forever, I would rather go to hell than to go to heaven and keep the society of such an infamous tyrant. I make my choice now. I despise that doctrine. It has covered the cheeks of this world with tears. It has polluted the hearts of children, and poisoned the imaginations of men.

Robert Green Ingersoll (1833–1899) American lawyer, freethinker, orator
Lecture (1877-01-31) “The Liberty of Man, Woman, and Child,” Case Hall, Boston

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A quotation from Adlai Stevenson

The conformists abominate thought. Thinking implies disagreement and disagreement implies non-conformity and non-conformity implies heresy and heresy implies disloyalty. So obviously thinking must be stopped. This is the routine. But I say to you that bawling is not a substitute for thinking and that reason is not the subversion but the salvation of freedom.

Adlai Stevenson II (1900–1965) American politician, diplomat, statesman
Speech (1954-03-22), “The Educated Citizen,” Senior Class Banquet, Dillon Gymnasium, Princeton University

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A quotation from Oliver Goldsmith

O blest retirement! friend to life’s decline,
Retreats from care that never must be mine.
How blest is he who crowns in shades like these,
A youth of labour with an age of ease.

Oliver Goldsmith (1730–1774) Irish poet, playwright, novelist
Poem (1770), “The Deserted Village,” l. 97ff

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A quotation from Twain

We must have a religion — it goes without saying — but my idea is, to have it cut up into forty free sects, so that they will police each other, as had been the case in the United States in my time. Concentration of power in a political machine is bad; and an Established Church is only a political machine; it was invented for that; it is nursed, cradled, preserved for that; it is an enemy to human liberty, and does no good which it could not better do in a split-up and scattered condition.

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Novel (1889), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Part 3 “The Tale of the Lost Land,” ch. 18 “In the Queen’s Dungeons”

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A quotation from Robert Louis Stevenson

The inn at Kinlochaline was the most beggarly vile place that ever pigs were styed in, full of smoke, vermin, and silent Highlanders.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
Novel (1886), Kidnapped, ch. 16 “The Lad with the Silver Button: Across Morven”

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A quotation from Horace

O my brave men! stout hearts of mine!
   who often have suffered worse calamities with me.
let us now drown your cares in wine.
   Tomorrow we venture once again upon the boundless sea.
 
[O fortes peioraque passi
mecum saepe viri, nunc vino pellite curas;
cras ingens iterabimus aequor.]

Horace (65–8 BC) Roman poet, satirist, soldier, politician [Quintus Horatius Flaccus]
Odes [Carmina], Book 1, # 7, l. 30ff (1.7.30-32) (23 BC) [tr. Alexander (1999)]

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A quotation from Orwell

The relative freedom which we enjoy depends on public opinion. The law is no protection. Governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general temper in the country. If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.

George Orwell (1903–1950) English journalist, essayist, writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
Essay (1945-12-07), “Freedom of the Park,” Tribune newspaper

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A quotation from Arthur Conan Doyle

This is the Dundas separation case, and, as it happens, I was engaged in clearing up some small points in connection with it. The husband was a teetotaler, there was no other woman, and the conduct complained of was that he had drifted into the habit of winding up every meal by taking out his false teeth and hurling them at his wife, which, you will allow, is not an action likely to occur to the imagination of the average story-teller.

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) British writer and physician
Story (1891-09), “A Case of Identity” [Holmes], The Strand Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 3

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A quotation from Josh Billings

An Enthuziast iz a party who beleaves about 4 times az mutch az he kan prove, and who kan prove about 4 times az mutch az ennyboddy else beleaves.
 
[An Enthusiast is a party who believes about 4 times a smuch as he can prove, and who can prove about 4 times as much as anybody else believes.]

Josh Billings (1818–1885) American humorist, aphorist [pseud. of Henry Wheeler Shaw]
Josh Billings’ Farmer’s Allminax, 1879-07 “Questions And Replize” (1879 ed.)

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A quotation from Theodore Roosevelt

And as for a life deliberately devoted to pleasure as an end — why, the greatest happiness is the happiness that comes as a by-product of striving to do what must be done, even though sorrow is met in the doing.

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer; US President (1901–09)
Autobiography, ch. 9 “Outdoors and Indoors” (1913)

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A quotation from Carlyle

Neither let mistakes and wrong directions — of which every man, in his studies and elsewhere, falls into many — discourage you. There is precious instruction to be got by finding that we are wrong. Let a man try faithfully, manfully, to be right, he will grow daily more and more right.

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish essayist and historian
Letter (1843-03-13), “Letter to a Young Man”

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A quotation from Doctor Who

THE DOCTOR: Which is the quickest way out of here?
(Each of the women at the fountain point in different directions.)
THE DOCTOR: Yes, well, that’s democracy for you. Come on.

Doctor Who (1963–1989) British science fiction television series, original run (BBC)
19×01 “Castrovalva,” Part 3 (1982-01-11) [w. Christopher H. Bidmead]

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A quotation from Oscar Wilde

Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish poet, wit, dramatist
Essay (1891-02), “The Soul of Man Under Socialism,” The Fortnightly Review, Vol. 49

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A quotation from Hoffer

The practice of terror serves the true believer not only to cow and crush his opponents but also to invigorate and intensify his own faith.

Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, Part 3, ch. 14, § 85 (3.14.85) (1951)

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A quotation from Hemingway

War is made or planned now by individual men, demagogues and dictators who play on the patriotism of their people to mislead them into a belief in the great fallacy of war when all their vaunted reforms have failed to satisfy the people they misrule.

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American writer
Essay (1935-09), “Notes on the Next War,” Esquire, Vol. 4, No. 3

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A quotation from Franklin

Words may shew a man’s Wit, but Actions his Meaning.

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher, aphorist
Poor Richard Improved (1749 ed.)

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A quotation from Montaigne

Kings and philosophers shit; and so do ladies.
 
[Les rois et les philosophes fientent, et les dames aussi.]

Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) French essayist
Essays, Book 3, ch. 13 (3.13), “Of Experience [De l’Experience]” (1588) [tr. Screech (1987)]

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