“Stealing a man's wife, that's nothing, but stealing his car, that's larceny.”
James M. Cain book The Postman Always Rings Twice
Source: The Postman Always Rings Twice
Book of Humorous Quotations, ed. Connie Robertson (1998), page 83
“Stealing a man's wife, that's nothing, but stealing his car, that's larceny.”
James M. Cain book The Postman Always Rings Twice
Source: The Postman Always Rings Twice
“Let the wife make her husband glad to come home and let him make her sorry to see him leave.”
Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation
Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers
Pittacus, 3.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 1: The Seven Sages
Philip José Farmer (1918–2009) American science fiction writer
Source: The Riverworld series, To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971), Chapter 1 (p. 1; First lines, depicting the death of Sir Richard Francis Burton).
Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner
Variant: When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness.
Source: The Kite Runner (2003)
Context: There is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft.... When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness.
Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer
Quoted in the "Apophthegms, Sentiments, Opinions and Occasional Reflections" of Sir John Hawkins (1787-1789) in Johnsonian Miscellanies (1897), vol. II, p. 11, edited by George Birkbeck Hill
“Forgiveness is better than revenge.”
Pittacus of Mytilene Greek sage
As quoted by Diogenes Laërtius in Life of Pittacus, i. 76, citing Heraclitus as his source.
Pittacus made this remark to justify his release of his captured enemy Alcaeus.
According to William Shepard Walsh, in Handy-book of Literary Curiosities (1892), p. 392, Epictetus, quoting from the same source, gives the phrase thus: "Forgiveness is better than punishment; for the one is proof of a gentle, the other of a savage, nature."
“Keep your secrets
Keep your silence
It is a better gift than truth”
Anne Rice book The Queen of the Damned
Source: The Queen of the Damned
“For a man wins nothing better than a good wife, and, again, nothing worse than a bad one.”
Hesiod book Works and Days
Source: Works and Days (c. 700 BC), line 702.