Loe raamatut: «The Times Great Quotations»

INTRODUCTION

“A good newspaper,” said the writer Arthur Miller, “is a nation talking to itself.” Being a good newspaper, The Times strives to be exactly that ideal. Being intelligent, too, it realised some years ago that one way to promote that end was to make use of the words of interesting people talking to others. As a consequence, in the Daily Universal Register section of every edition, next to the birthdays, the anniversaries and the plashings of voles, there began to appear a stimulating quotation or saying of note, of which this volume is a selection.

Because the quotes which have appeared in the newspaper were assembled on random lines, this is not intended to be a traditional, comprehensive dictionary of famous quotations as such, though I hope it is nevertheless a valuable work of reference. Rather, the content has been grouped into common themes. Again, the hope is that, taken together in this way, these insights, musings and witty observations will provide food for thought. Those readers who wish to find quotes from specific people can easily do so by consulting the index at the back of the book.

Winston Churchill, the originator of a memorable line or two himself, believed it “a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations”. He may have been playing up his own inattentiveness as a schoolboy, but what can the rest of us gain from a ramble through the thoughts of greater minds? One thing is that they do think alike. Over the centuries, the same subjects and reflections recur, for after all much is constant in the human race. Often, too, even the words are similar, and at certain times in history seem to occur to people almost simultaneously. Was it William Faulkner or André Gide who said something about not being able to swim for new horizons without losing sight of the shore?

And, besides being treated to some world-class lectures in the essentials of philosophy, politics, success and common sense, there is the satisfaction (and surprise) of discovering how many expressions that we use every day are actually quotations. Who first said he was going from the sublime to the ridiculous? Napoleon, while leaving Russia. Who held that hell could be paved with good resolutions (often misquoted as good intentions)? That was Mark Twain. And was it a logistics company or the polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen who advised that the difficult takes a little time, the impossible a little longer?

Similarly, it is good to be reminded of the proper context of phrases often cited without knowledge of to what they refer. Making the pips squeak, a favourite standby of politicians, initially had nothing to do with taxing the rich. It was coined in 1918 with regard to the scale of German reparations for the First World War.

When Stanley Baldwin talked of newspapers having “power without responsibility”, he was himself quoting his cousin Rudyard Kipling, and when his successor as prime minister returned from Germany holding in his hand “peace with honour”, he was referencing a remark of his mid-19th century predecessor, Lord John Russell.

In the preparation of the text, every effort has been made to attribute correctly the quotations chosen. Their sources have been given where they are known to be contemporaneous with or authored by the speaker. Where it might be helpful, an English translation is given from a foreign language.

Remembrance of Things Past? Nothing to do with Proust originally, it comes from a Shakespeare sonnet. Fools rush in; hope springs eternal; to err is human; even that Cup Final favourite sing-song about death’s sting – all 18th century poet Alexander Pope. Let us salute Samuel Johnson as a compiler of dictionaries, but I can’t agree with him that making – and reading – them is “dull work”.

James Owen

ACHIEVEMENT AND SUCCESS

He who does something at the head of one regiment, will eclipse him who does nothing at the head of a hundred.

[Letter, 1861]

Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the US (1809–1865)

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Those who believe that they are exclusively in the right are generally those who achieve something.

Proper Studies (1927)

Aldous Huxley, English writer and philosopher (1894–1963)

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Concentrate all of your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.

Alexander Graham Bell, Scottish-born scientist and inventor (1847–1922)

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Give me but one firm spot on which to stand and I will move the Earth.

Archimedes, Greek mathematician and physicist (287–212 BC)

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Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.

The World as Will and Representation (1819)

Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher (1788–1860)

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For myself, losing is not coming second. It’s getting out of the water knowing you could have done better.

Ian Thorpe, Australian Olympic swimmer (1982–)

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One secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.

Benjamin Disraeli, prime minister of the UK (1804–1881)

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Well done is better than well said.

Benjamin Franklin, founding father of the US (1706–1790)

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To gain that which is worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else.

The Price of My Soul (1969)

Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, Irish civil rights leader (1947–)

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It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself.

The Feminine Mystique (1963)

Betty Friedan, American writer and activist (1921–2006)

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Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.

Mother Teresa, Albanian nun and missionary (1910–1997)

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It’s the stuff of dreams … Kids from Kilburn don’t become favourite for the Tour de France. You’re supposed to become a postman or a milkman or work in Ladbrokes.

Bradley Wiggins, British professional road racing cyclist (1980–)

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The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

Broca’s Brain (1979)

Carl Sagan, American astronomer and educator (1934–1996)

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Diligence is the mother of good fortune, and idleness, its opposite, never led to good intention’s goal.

Don Quixote (1605)

Miguel de Cervantes, Spanish writer (1547–1616)

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The world is divided into people who do things and people who get the credit. Try, if you can, to belong to the first class. There’s far less competition.

Dwight Morrow, American diplomat (1873–1931)

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The two kinds of people on earth I mean are the people who lift, and the people who lean.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox, American writer and poet (1850–1919)

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I attribute my success to this — I never gave or took any excuse.

Florence Nightingale, English social reformer and nurse (1820–1910)

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The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

Man and Superman (1903)

George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright (1856–1950)

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Success is more dangerous than failure, the ripples break over a wider coastline.

Graham Greene, English writer (1904–1991)

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If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.

Henry Ford, American industrialist and businessman (1863–1947)

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Not in the clamour of the crowded street, not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, but in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American poet (1807–1882)

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Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil.

Lycidas (1637)

John Milton, English poet (1608–1674)

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All the world’s great have been little boys who wanted the moon.

Cup of Gold (1929)

John Steinbeck, American writer (1902–1968)

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Whether our efforts are, or not, favoured by life, let us be able to say when we come near the great goal, “I have done what I could”.

Louis Pasteur, French biologist and chemist (1822–1895)

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I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done.

Marie Curie, French-Polish physicist and chemist (1867–1934)

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All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.

Mark Twain, American writer (1835–1910)

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To live at all is miracle enough.

Mervyn Peake, English writer (1911–1968)

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In most things success depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.

Pensées et fragments inédits

Montesquieu, French political philosopher (1689–1755)

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The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.

New England Reformers (1844)

Ralph Waldo Emerson, American poet, essayist and philosopher (1803–1882)

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The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking.

Samuel Johnson, English writer, critic and lexicographer (1709–1784)

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I had done all that I could; and no man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.

Samuel Johnson, English writer, critic and lexicographer (1709–1784)

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It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.

Sir Edmund Hillary, New Zealand mountaineer (1919–2008)

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We may become the makers of our fate when we have ceased to pose as its prophets.

Sir Karl Popper, Austrian-British philosopher and professor (1902–1994)

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All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.

[Letter to JG Lockhart, 1830]

Sir Walter Scott, Scottish writer (1771–1832)

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My mountain did not seem to me a lifeless thing of rock and ice, but warm and friendly and living.

She was a mother hen, and the other mountains were chicks under her wings.

Man of Everest (1955)

Tenzing Norgay, Nepali Sherpa mountaineer (1914–1986)

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Many of life’s failures are people who did not realise how close they were to success when they gave up.

Thomas Edison, American inventor (1847–1931)

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Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration.

Thomas Edison, American inventor (1847–1931)

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It is sobering to consider that when Mozart was my age he had already been dead for a year.

Tom Lehrer, American humourist and singer-songwriter (1928–)

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Success is relative: It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things.

The Family Reunion (1939)

TS Eliot, English-American poet, critic and dramatist (1888–1965)

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In the United States there’s a Puritan ethic and a mythology of success. He who is successful is good. In Latin countries, in Catholic countries, a successful person is a sinner.

International Herald Tribune (1988)

Umberto Eco, Italian philosopher, writer and professor of semiotics (1932–2016)

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Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.

Vincent van Gogh, Dutch painter (1853–1890)

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I felt as if I was walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and this trial.

[On becoming prime minister during the Second World War]

Sir Winston Churchill, prime minister of the UK, historian and Nobel Prize winner (1874–1965)

ACTING AND DRAMA

Just say the lines and don’t trip over the furniture.

Sir Noël Coward, English playwright (1899–1973)

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Television has brought back murder into the home — where it belongs.

Alfred Hitchcock, English film director (1899–1980)

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If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don’t put it there.

Teatr i iskusstvo (1904)

Anton Chekhov, Russian playwright and short-story writer (1860–1904)

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The structure of a play is always the story of how the birds came home to roost.

Shadows of the Gods (1958)

Arthur Miller, American playwright (1915–2005)

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The basic essential of a great actor is that he loves himself in acting.

My Autobiography (1964)

Charlie Chaplin, English comic actor, director and composer (1889–1977)

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Without wonder and insight, acting is just a trade. With it, it becomes creation.

The Lonely Life (1962)

Bette Davis, American actress (1908–1989)

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You spend all your life trying to do something they put people in asylums for.

Jane Fonda, American actress (1937–)

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Acting should be like punk in the best way. It should be a full-on expression of self – only without the broken bottles.

Uncut (2000)

John Cusack, American actor (1966–)

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Playing Shakespeare is very tiring. You never get to sit down, unless you’re a king.

Josephine Hull, American actress (1877–1957)

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Acting is a masochistic form of exhibitionism. It is not quite the occupation of an adult.

Time (1978)

Laurence Olivier, English actor (1907–1989)

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A painter paints, a musician plays, a writer writes – but a movie actor waits.

A Life on Film (1967)

Mary Astor, American actress (1906–1987)

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Acting is standing up naked and turning around slowly.

Life Is a Banquet (1977)

Rosalind Russell, American actress (1907–1976)

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Being another character is more interesting than being yourself.

Sir John Gielgud, English actor (1904–2000)

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The art of acting consists in keeping people from coughing.

Sir Ralph Richardson, English actor (1902–1983)

ACTIONS AND BEHAVIOUR

Official dignity tends to increase in inverse ratio to the importance of the country in which the office is held.

Beyond the Mexique Bay (1934)

Aldous Huxley, English writer and philosopher (1894–1963)

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Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.

Themes and Variations (1950)

Aldous Huxley, English writer and philosopher (1894–1963)

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It is always easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.

Alfred Adler, Austrian psychologist and psychiatrist (1870–1937)

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Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labour by taking up another.

The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (1881)

Anatole France, French poet (1844–1924)

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A man’s mind will very generally refuse to make itself up until it be driven and compelled by emergency.

Ayala’s Angel (1881)

Anthony Trollope, English writer (1815–1882)

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I have taken great care not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.

Tractatus Politicus (1677)

Baruch Spinoza, Dutch philosopher (1632–1677)

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Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.

The Conquest of Happiness (1930)

Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, mathematician, historian, and writer (1872–1970)

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One of the symptoms of approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important, and that to take a holiday would bring all kinds of disaster.

In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays (1935)

Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, mathematician, historian, and writer (1872–1970)

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The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962)

Carl Jung, Swiss psychologist (1875–1961)

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The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.

Modern Man in Search of a Soul (1933)

Carl Jung, Swiss psychologist (1875–1961)

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Where we have strong emotions, we’re liable to fool ourselves.

Cosmos (1980)

Carl Sagan, American astronomer and educator (1934–1996)

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My life is spent in a perpetual alternation between two rhythms, the rhythm of attracting people for fear I may be lonely, and the rhythm of trying to get rid of them because I know that I am bored.

The Observer (1948)

CEM Joad, English philosopher (1891–1953)

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Any man may be in good spirits and good temper when he’s well dressed. There ain’t much credit in that.

Martin Chuzzlewit (1844)

Charles Dickens, English writer and social critic (1812–1870)

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Every one says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.

Mere Christianity (1952)

CS Lewis, British literary scholar and writer (1898–1963)

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Pleasure is a thief to business.

The Complete English Tradesman (1726)

Daniel Defoe, English trader, writer and spy (1660–1731)

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The heart of man is made to reconcile the most glaring contradictions.

Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects (1753)

David Hume, Scottish philosopher (1711–1776)

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Every time you open your wardrobe, you look at your clothes and you wonder what you are going to wear. What you are really saying is, “Who am I going to be today?”

The New Yorker (1995)

Fay Weldon, English feminist and playwright (1931–)

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Everyone thinks his own burden is heavy.

French proverb

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The smyler with the knyf under the cloke.

The Knight’s Tale (1387)

Geoffrey Chaucer, English poet (c. 1343–1400)

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Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.

Adam Bede (1859)

George Eliot, English writer (1819–1880)

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Our actions are like ships which we may watch set out to sea, and not know when or with what cargo they will return to port.

The Bell (1958)

Iris Murdoch, Irish writer (1919–1999)

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The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation … The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.

The Ascent of Man (1973)

Jacob Bronowski, British-Polish mathematician and science historian (1908–1974)

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Only the actions of the just,

Smell sweet and blossom on their dust.

The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses for the Armour of Achilles (1659)

James Shirley, English playwright (1596–1666)

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It isn’t what we say or think that defines us, but what we do.

Sense and Sensibility (1811)

Jane Austen, English writer (1775–1817)

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I was raised to feel that doing nothing was a sin. I had to learn to do nothing.

The Observer (1998)

Jenny Joseph, English poet (1932–2018)

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It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Jerome K Jerome, English writer (1859–1927)

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Deeds, not words shall speak me.

The Lover’s Progress (1647)

John Fletcher, English playwright (1579–1625)

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I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)

John Locke, English philosopher (1632–1704)

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Word is but wynd; leff woord and tak the dede.

Secrets of Old Philosophers

John Lydgate, English poet (1370–1451)

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The highest reward for a man’s toil is not what he gets for it but what he becomes by it.

John Ruskin, English art critic (1819–1900)

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Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions.

Nostromo (1904)

Joseph Conrad, Polish-British writer (1857–1924)

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Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity, and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigour of the mind.

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883)

Leonardo da Vinci, Italian polymath (1452–1519)

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Everybody, sooner or later, sits down to a banquet of consequences.

Old Mortality (1884)

Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish writer (1850–1894)

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The only infallible rule we know is, that the man who is always talking about being a gentleman never is one.

Ask Mamma (1858)

RS Surtees, English editor and sporting writer (1805–1864)

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Everyone is more or less mad on one point.

Plain Tales from the Hills (1888)

Rudyard Kipling, English journalist and writer (1865–1936)

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The ordinary acts we practise every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest.

Sir Thomas More, English saint and lawyer (1478–1535)

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Terror … often arises from a pervasive sense of disestablishment; that things are in the unmaking.

Danse Macabre (1981)

Stephen King, American writer (1947–)

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Perfection is terrible, it cannot have children.

The Munich Mannequins (1965)

Sylvia Plath, American poet and writer (1932–1963)

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It is part of human nature to hate the man you have hurt.

Agricola (c. 98)

Tacitus, Roman senator and historian (c. 56–120)

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Considering how foolishly people act and how pleasantly they prattle, perhaps it would be better for the world if they talked more and did less.

A Writer’s Notebook (1946)

W Somerset Maugham, British playwright (1874–1965)

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It is an undoubted truth, that the less one has to do, the less time one finds to do it in. One yawns, one procrastinates, one can do it when one will, and therefore one seldom does it at all.

Lord Chesterfield, British statesman (1694–1773)

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Anything that is worth doing has been done frequently. Things hitherto undone should be given, I suspect, a wide berth.

Mainly on the Air (1946)

Sir Max Beerbohm, English essayist and parodist (1872–1956)

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Truly, when the day of judgment comes, it will not be a question of what we have read, but what we have done.

De Imitatione Christi (c. 1418–1427)

Thomas á Kempis, Dutch-German canon regular and writer (1380–1471)

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Men are rewarded and punished not for what they do, but rather for how their acts are defined. This is why men are more interested in better justifying themselves than in better behaving themselves.

The Second Sin (1973)

Thomas Szasz, American-Hungarian psychiatrist (1920–2012)