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“There are more old drunks than there are old doctors.”
“Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.”
Attributed in Mohammed Sirajul Islam (1967), Everyman's General Knowledge
In fact this is a Chinese saying by a Confucian scholar from the Ming Dynasty, 焦竑 (Jiao Hong) (1540—1620)《玉堂丛语》卷五: 宁为有瑕玉,不作无瑕石。
Misattributed, Chinese
“O for a life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts!”
Letter to Benjamin Bailey (November 22, 1817)
Letters (1817–1820)
Source: Letters of John Keats
“Imagining something is better than remembering something.”
Source: The World According to Garp]] (1978)
“The impossible is more believable than the highly improbable.”
Source: The Cardturner: A Novel about a King, a Queen, and a Joker
“It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.”
Hawthorne and His Mosses (1850)
Context: It is better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness.
Context: It is better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness. And if it be said, that continual success is a proof that a man wisely knows his powers, — it is only to be added, that, in that case, he knows them to be small. Let us believe it, then, once for all, that there is no hope for us in these smooth pleasing writers that know their powers.
“Be self aware, rather than a repetitious robot”
“A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.”
Quoted in "Vidal: 'I'm at the Top of a Very Tiny Heap,'" profile by Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times (12 March 1981), Late City Final Edition, Section C, Page 17, Column 1.
1980s
“The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.”
Source: 1790s, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–1793), Proverbs of Hell, Line 44
Source: Songs of Innocence and of Experience
“Nothing is better for self-esteem than survival.”
"Travels with Myself and Another: A Memoir" (1978) by Martha Gellhorn.
Source: Travels With Myself and Another
“It's easier to ask forgiveness than to beg for permission.”
Source: Lion's Heat
“Better to be judged by twelve than carried by six”
Source: Infamous
“The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.”
John Brown: A Biography (1909): "The Legacy of John Brown"