"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it."

George Orwell "Shooting an Elephant"

Defeates and Mistakes

Peace and War

"Paradox is the poisonous flower of quietism, the iridescent surface of the rotting mind, the greatest depravity of all."

Thomas Mann "The Magic Mountain"

Art and Culture

Intellect, Judgement

"Time may be a great healer, but it's a lousy beautician."

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Beauty and Ugliness

Time and Passing

"Science increases our power in proportion as it lowers our pride."

Claude Bernard

Science and Technology

"An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one."

George Mikes

History and Nations

"The true poet has no choice of material. The material plainly chooses him, not he it."

J. D. Salinger

Art and Culture

"Lovers' quarrels are the renewal of love."

Terence "Andria"

Love

"Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans."

John Lennon

Life and Death

"Physical prowess is for cowards; a little pain builds character."

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Pain and Tears

"The first victim of anger is the angry man."

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Anger

"This year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practise ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people."

Clive Staples Lewis "Mere Christianity"

Human

Manners and Ethics

"Justice is simply the advantage of the stronger."

Thrasymachus

Justice

Power and Weakness

"Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other."

Edmund Burke

Education

Human

"Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment."

George Santayana "Life of Reason"

Happiness

Life and Death

"Perfection is a road, not a destination."

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Various

"Only he can understand what a farm is, what a country is, who shall have sacrificed part of himself to his farm or country, fought to save it, struggled to make it beautiful. Only then will the love of farm or country fill his heart."

Saint-Exupery-Antoine-de "Flight to Arras"

Patriotism

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."

Arthur Schopenhauer

Truth and Falsity

"Don't accept your dog's admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful."

Ann Landers

Nature and Animals

"Not to be loved is a misfortune, but it is an insult to be loved no longer."

Charles Louis de Montesquieu

Love

"A mother becomes a true grandmother the day she stops noticing the terrible things her children do because she is so enchanted with the wonderful things her grandchildren do."

Lois Wyse "Funny, You Don't Look Like a Grandmother"

Family and Loneliness

Youth and Age

"Wars can be prevented just as surely as they can be provoked, and we who fail to prevent them must share the guilt for the dead."

gen. Omar Bradley

Justice

Peace and War

"Confess your sins to the Lord and you will be forgiven; confess them to man and you will be laughed at."

Josh Billings

Sin and Conscience

"Being a writer in a library is rather like being a eunuch in a harem."

John Braine

Art and Culture

"There are only two families in the world, the Haves and the Have-Nots."

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra "Don Quixote de la Mancha"

Richness and Money

"In justifying cruelty to animals we put ourselves also on the animal level. We choose the jungle and must abide by our choice."

Clive Staples Lewis "God In The Dock"

Good and Evil

Human

Nature and Animals

"We are born charming, fresh and spontaneous and must be civilized before we are fit to participate in society."

Judith Martin (Miss Manners)

Manners and Ethics

"A man loves his sweetheart the most, his wife the best, but his mother the longest."

Irish Proverbs

Family and Loneliness

Love

Woman and Man

"God heals, and the Doctor takes the Fee."

Benjamin Franklin

Health and Alcohol

"There are people who are so full of common sense that they haven't the slightest cranny left for their own sense."

Miguel de Unamuno

Intellect, Judgement

"You'll catch a liar before you'll catch a cripple."

Catalan Proverbs

Truth and Falsity

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."

Eleanor Roosevelt

Dreams and Desires

Time and Passing

"Eat and drink with your relatives; do business with strangers."

Greek Proverbs

Family and Loneliness

"Fire and water have no mercy."

Various Proverbs

Nature and Animals

"Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling."

Margaret Lee Runbeck

Happiness

"Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities."

Aldous Huxley

Happiness

"Evil is done without effort, naturally, it is the working of fate; good is always the product of an art."

Charles Baudelaire

Art and Culture

Good and Evil

"If there were no bad people there would be no good lawyers."

Charles Dickens "The Old Curiosity Shop"

Good and Evil

Law and Crime

"There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it."

Edith Wharton

Good and Evil

Knowledge, Ignorance

"Perfect freedom is reserved for the man who lives by his own work and in that work does what he wants to do."

R. G. Collingwood "Speculum Mentis"

Freedom and Servitude

Work and Laziness

"Wedding: the point at which a man stops toasting a woman and begins roasting her."

Helen Rowland "A Guide to Men"

Marriage

Woman and Man

"There is no first world and third world. There is only one world, for all of us to live and delight in."

Gerald Durrell

Various

"It is well that war is so terrible — lest we should grow too fond of it."

Robert E. Lee

Peace and War

"When is a crisis reached? When questions arise that can't be answered."

Ryszard Kapusciński "A Warsaw Diary"

Question and Problem

"Nature admits of no permanence in the relation between man and woman.... It is only man's egoism that wants to keep woman like some buried treasure. All endeavors to introduce permanence in love, the most changeable thing in this changeable human existence, have gone shipwreck in spite of religious ceremonies, vows, and legalities."

Sacher-Masoch-Leopold-Von "Venus in Furs"

Love

Manners and Ethics

Woman and Man

"Beauty is one of the rare things that do not lead to doubt of God."

Jean Anouilh "Becket"

Beauty and Ugliness

God and Religion

"The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so that they believe they are as clever as he."

Karl Kraus

Wisdom and Stupidity

"If Socrates lived and died like a philosopher, Jesus lived and died like a God."

Rousseau-Jean-Jacques

Life and Death

"Society, my dear, is like salt water, good to swim in but hard to swallow."

Arthur Stringer

Various