“For simple light is perhaps still more beautiful than colors.”
“In a serious struggle there is no worse cruelty than to be magnanimous at an inopportune time.”
The Russian Revolution (1930)
“The peculiar characteristic of classical music is that it is really better than it sounds.”
A stand-up line quoted in 1888.
Attributed
Variant: Wagner's music is better than it sounds (attested in an obituary; see The Quote Verifier)
“Be rather delighted with those that reprove, than with those that flatter you.”
29
Pythagorean Ethical Sentences
“It is more easy to get a favor from Fortune than to keep it.”
Fortunam citius reperias quam retineas.
Maxim 282
Sentences
“There probably is a God. Many things are easier to explain if there is than if there isn't.”
As quoted in John Von Neumann : The Scientific Genius Who Pioneered the Modern Computer, Game Theory, Nuclear Deterrence and Much More (1992) by Norman Macrae, p. 379
“A man’s dying is more the survivors’ affair than his own.”
Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 6
“Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one.”
Source: 1910s, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays http://archive.org/stream/mysticism00russuoft/mysticism00russuoft_djvu.txt (1918), Ch. 1: Mysticism and Logic
“I am no more humble than my talents require.”
As quoted in Memorable Quotations: Jewish Writers of the Past (2005) edited by Carol A. Dingle.
“Her wit was more than man, her innocence a child.”
To the Pious Memory of Mrs. Anne Killegrew (1686), line 70.
“It is better to limp in the way, than run with the greatest swiftness out of it.”
Book 1, Chapter 6, p. 72
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)
“In all the broad Universe there is no other hope for Man than ourselves.”
"Ron's Journal" (1967).
“It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.”
Satius est supervacua scire quam nihil.
Source: Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter LXXXVIII: On liberal and vocational studies, Line 45.
“Reality is much more absurd and complex than any fiction.”
"China on China, Culture for Billions" Documentary
“More people are flattered into virtue than bullied out of vice.”
The Analysis of the Hunting Field (1846) ch. 1
“That's American English for you: more roots than a mangrove swamp.”
Alphabet Juice (2008), p. 359.
“There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.”
Attributed
“Stirner … holds to a joy-principle rather than to a pleasure-principle.”
Source: Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974), p. 143
