I've Heard it Said

Time again for another batch of the quotations I seem to pile up. As is so often true, these are all (I think) from the excellent A Word a Day:

Infidel, n. In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does. -Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), [The Devil's Dictionary, 1906]

They know enough who know how to learn. -Henry Adams (1838-1918)

No man is clever enough to know all the evil he does. -La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them. -Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)

To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift. Hardly less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves. -Aldous Huxley, novelist (1894-1963)

It seems to me that our three basic needs for food and security and love are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. -M.F.K. (Mary Frances Kennedy) Fisher, writer (1908-1992)

A man who is 'ill-adjusted' to the world is always on the verge of finding himself. One who is adjusted to the world never finds himself, but gets to be a cabinet minister. -Hermann Hesse, novelist, poet, Nobel laureate (1877-1962)

To use bitter words, when kind words are at hand is like picking unripe fruit when the ripe fruit is there. -Thiruvalluvar, poet (c. 1st century BCE or 6th century CE)

After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on -- have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear -- what remains? Nature remains. -Walt Whitman, poet (1819-1892)

It is a very lonely life that a man leads, who becomes aware of truths before their times. -Thomas Brackett Reed, politician (1839-1902)

Political history is largely an account of mass violence and of the expenditure of vast resources to cope with mythical fears and hopes. -Murray Edelman, professor, author (1919-2001)