Wise Quotes Set One Flashcards
Washington Irving on Women (The fictional narrator from Sleepy Hollow)
“I profess not to know how women’s hearts are wooed and won. To me they have always been matters of riddle and admiration. Some seem to have but one vulnerable point, or door of access; while others have a thousand avenues, and may be captured in a thousand different ways. It is a great triumph of skill to gain the former, but a still greater proof of generalship to maintain possession of the latter, for man must battle for his fortress at every door and window.”
Epictetus on being the purple, final paragraph (Golden Saying VIII)
“Because you think yourself but one among the many threads which make up the texture of the doublet. You should aim at being like men in general–just as your thread has no ambition to be anything distinguished compared with the other threads. But I desire to be the purple–that small and shining part, which makes the rest, seem fair and beautiful. Why then do you bid me become even as the multitude? Then were I no longer the purple.”
Horace Wadpole on the English Language (from The Castle of Otranto)
“It is difficult in English to relate without falling too low or rising too high; a fault obviously occasioned by the little care taken to speak pure language in common conversation.” (This was written in 1764)
Socrates on Poets (from The Apology)
“I soon discovered this, therefore, with regard to the poets, that they do not effect their object by wisdom, but by a certain natural inspiration, and under the influence of enthusiasm, like prophets and seers; for these also say many fine things, but they understand nothing they say.”
Emily Bronte (Nelly in Wuthering Heights)
“Any relic of the dead is precious, if they were valued living.”
Niccolo Machiavelli on the treatment of men
“Men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot.”
