Thomas Babington, Lord Macauly
On Niccolo de Machiavelli (In Edinburgh Review, March 1827)
Oscar Wilde
1
Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
2
Conscience and cowardice are really the same things.
3
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.
4
It is through Art, and through Art only, that we can realize our perfection; through Art and Art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.
5
In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
6
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
La Rouchefoucauld
7
One is almost always bored by the very people one is not permitted to find boring.
8
Generally we praise with enthusiasm only those who admire us.
9
Mediocre minds usually condemn all that is beyond their comprehension.
10
If vanity does not overturn the virtues entirely, at least it shakes them up.
11
Sometimes one is happier being deceived by that which one loves than learning the truth.
12
One does not give praise except to profit by it.
Franz Kafka
13
The martyrs do not underestimate the body; they cause it to be elevated on the cross. In that they are at one with their enemies.
14
Intercourse with human beings seduces one to self-contemplation.
15
Some deny the existence of misery by pointing to the sun; he denies the existence of the sun by pointing to misery.
16
It is conceivable that Alexander the Great, in spite of the marital successes of his early days, in spite of the excellent army that he had trained, in spite of the power he felt within him to change the world, might have remained standing on the bank of the Hellespont and never out of indecision, not out of infirmity of will, but because of the mere weight of his own body.
17
In the fight between you and the world back the world.
18
A first sign of nascent knowledge is the desire for death. This life seems unendurable, any other attainable. One is not longer ashamed of wishing to die; one prays to be conducted from the old cell that one hates into a new one that one has yet to hate. There is in this a vestige of faith that during the change the Master may chance to walk along the corridor, contemplate the prisoner, and say, "You must not lock up this one again. He is to come to me."
No comments:
Post a Comment