Men are only too clever at shifting blame from their own shoulders to those of others.
Titus Livius, Ab urbe condita (History of Rome; 27–9 B.C.), Book XXVIII, sec. 25.
Category: Thought
The only method of learning to bear with dignity the vicissitudes of fortune is to recall the catastrophes of others.
Polybius, The Histories, trans. Evelyn S. Shuckburgh (1889), Book I, Chapter 1.
The old Romans all wished to have a king over them because they had not yet tasted the sweetness of freedom.
Titus Livius, Ab urbe condita (History of Rome; 27–9 B.C.), Book I, sec. 17.
Necessitas etiam timidos fortes facit.
Necessity makes even the timid brave.
Gaius Sallustius Crispus, Bellum Catilinae (c. 44 BC), Chapter LVII.
Once killing starts, it is difficult to draw the line.
Publius Tacitus, Histories (100 A.D.), Book One.
Proprium humani ingenii est odisse quem laeseris.
It belongs to human nature to hate those you have injured.
Publius Tacitus, Agricola (98 A.D.), Chapter 42.
Categories
“Poor Richard”
Force shites upon Reason’s Back.
Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack (1736).
Categories
Orson Welles
I don’t regard my career as something so precious that it comes before my convictions.
Orson Welles, in an interview with Bernie Braden in Paris (1960).
Categories
Alfred Hitchcock
We do not recommend suicide as a way of life.
Alfred Hitchcock, Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1965).
Categories
Orson Welles
The ideal American type is perfectly expressed by the Protestant, individualist, anti-conformist, and this is the type that is in the process of disappearing. In reality there are few left.
Orson Welles, in an interview from Hollywood Voices (1971), Andrew Sarris, editor.