Nathan > Nathan's Quotes

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#1

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

tags: attributed-no-source, books, simile, soul

135581 likes

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#2

“It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else, and still unknown to himself.”
― Francis Bacon

tags: self-knowledge

236 likes

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#3

“Entertainers wrongly assume that their fame, money, and influence arise from broad knowledge rather than natural talent, looks, or mastery of a narrow skill.”
― Victor Davis Hanson

27 likes

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#4

“If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.”
― Thomas Sowell, Knowledge and Decisions

72 likes

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#5

“Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you. ”
― Pericles

tags: politics

765 likes

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#6

“From this I conclude that the best education for the situations of actual life consists of the experience we acquire from the study of serious history. For it is history alone which without causing us harm enables us to judge what is the best course in any situation or circumstance.”
― Polybius, The Rise of the Roman Empire

tags: history, political-science

10 likes

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#7

“In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.”
― Margaret Thatcher

tags: misattributed-edward-gibbon

123 likes

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#8

“My early and invincible love of reading--I would not exchange for the treasures of India.”
― Edward Gibbon

tags: love, reading, treasures

77 likes

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#9

“The five marks of the Roman decaying culture:

Concern with displaying affluence instead of building wealth;

Obsession with sex and perversions of sex;

Art becomes freakish and sensationalistic instead of creative and original;

Widening disparity between very rich and very poor;

Increased demand to live off the state.”
― Edward Gibbon

tags: cultural-decay

135 likes

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#10

“Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.”
― Edward Gibbon

110 likes

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#11

“We improve ourselves by victory over our self. There must be contests, and you must win.”
― Edward Gibbon

1386 likes

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#12

“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

tags: ataraxy, independence, individuality, inspirational, self-assurance, self-awareness, self-containment, self-determination, self-esteem, self-reliance, self-respect, self-sufficiency, self-trust, solitude

1762 likes

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#13

“The most fruitful and natural exercise for our minds is, in my opinion, conversation.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Essays: A Selection

tags: conversation, mind

128 likes

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#14

“Off I go, rummaging about in books for sayings which please me.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

tags: books-reading

178 likes

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#15

“And last are the few whose delight is in meditation and understanding; who yearn not for goods, nor for victory, but for knowledge; who leave both market and battlefield to lose themselves in the quiet clarity of secluded thought; whose will is a light rather than a fire, whose haven is not power but truth: these are the men of wisdom, who stand aside unused by the world.”
― Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

94 likes

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#16

“Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men. Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth, now the living timber bursts with the new buds and spring comes round again. And so with men: as one generation comes to life, another dies away.”
― Homer, The Iliad

390 likes

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#17

“The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false. ”
― Paul Johnson

79 likes

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#18

“Midway along the journey of our life
I woke to find myself in a dark wood,
for I had wandered off from the straight path.

How hard it is to tell what it was like,
this wood of wilderness, savage and stubborn
(the thought of it brings back all my old fears),

a bitter place! Death could scarce be bitterer.
But if I would show the good that came of it
I must talk about things other than the good.”
― Dante Alighieri

tags: astray, dante-alighieri, wandering

96 likes

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#19

“The gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal, because any moment may be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.”
― Brad Pitt

tags: brad-pitt, troy

267 likes

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#20

“It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.”
― Voltaire, The Age of Louis XIV

tags: dissent, freedom-of-thought, heresy

1078 likes

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Tags From Nathan’s Quotes

attributed-no-source
books
simile
soul
self-knowledge
politics
history
political-science
misattributed-edward-gibbon
love
reading
treasures
cultural-decay
ataraxy
independence
individuality
inspirational
self-assurance
self-awareness
self-containment
self-determination
self-esteem
self-reliance
self-respect
self-sufficiency
self-trust
solitude
conversation
mind
books-reading
astray
dante-alighieri
wandering
brad-pitt
troy
dissent
freedom-of-thought
heresy