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Classical Quotations

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Archive 1

“A little learning is a dangerous thing.  Drink deep from the Pierian (Knowledge's) spring, there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, while drinking largely sobers us again.”

                            ——Alexander Pope, “Essay on Criticism”

“I warn the marauder dragging plunder, chaotic, rich beyond all rights:  he’ll strike his sails, harried at long last, stunned when the squalls of torment break his spars to bits.”

                           ——Aeschylus.

“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.”

                           ——Mark Twain.

“The loveliest faces are to be seen by moonlight, when one sees half with the eye and half with the fancy.”

                           ——Persian proverb.

“I hold that to need nothing is divine, and the less a man needs the nearer does he approach divinity. “

                           ——Socrates.

“The most touching epitaph I ever encountered was on the tombstone of the printer of Edinburgh. It said simply: ‘He kept down the cost and set the type right.’

                           ——Gregory Nunn.

“The Moving Finger writes; and having writ,

Moves on:  nor all your Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it."

                           ——Omar Khayyam.

“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time.

                           ——Abraham Lincoln.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,

Or close the wall up with our English dead

In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man

As modest stillness and humility;

But when the blast of war blows in our ears,

Then imitate the action of the tiger:

Stiffen the sinews, conjure up the blood,

Disguise fair nature with hard-favored rage.

Then lend the eye a terrible aspect.”

                           ——Shakespeare "Henry V"

No man is an island entire of himself, every man is a piece of the Continent a part of the main.  ...  Any man’s death diminishes me for I am involved in Mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee. 

                           ——John Donne

... the worst cowardice.

This book is sweet ...

Bushido : The Way of the Samurai