“Our ignorance of history makes us libel our own times. People have always been like this.” — Flaubert

“Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.” — Lewis Carroll

“Madam, it is the hardest thing in the world to be in love, and yet attend to business. A gentleman asked me this morning, ‘What news from Lisbon?’ and I answered, ‘She is exquisitely handsome.'” — Richard Steele

“I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.” — Thoreau

“It is equally pointless to weep because we won’t be alive a hundred years from now as that we were not here a hundred years ago.” — Montaigne

“People are usually more firmly convinced that their opinions are precious than that they are true.” — George Santayana

“A kitten is so flexible that she is almost double. The hind parts are equivalent to another kitten with which the fore part plays. She does not discover that her tail belongs to her till you tread upon it.” — Thoreau