“It is better to be a good human being than to be a bad one. It is just naturally better.”
William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer
My Heart's in the Highlands (1939)
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“Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise.”
Cato the Elder (-234–-149 BC) politician, writer and economist (0234-0149)
Plutarch's Life of Cato
Variant: Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise.
“In many walks of life, a conscience is a more expensive encumbrance than a wife or a carriage.”
Thomas De Quincey book Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822-1856)
“Success is more dangerous than failure, the ripples break over a wider coastline.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) English writer, playwright and literary critic
Independent (London, April 4, 1991)
“The driver wanted Reacher more than he wanted an undamaged front bumper.”
Lee Child book Worth Dying For
Worth Dying For, (2010).
“The next time you interfere with me, more than smoke will interfere with you.”
Jim Butcher book Day Off
Character: "Darth Wannabe"
The Dresden Files short stories, Day Off
“They (i. e., the peasants) could imagine no future more grim than their past.”
Glen Cook book She Is the Darkness
Source: She Is the Darkness (1997), Chapter 86 (p. 575)
“Every man in the world is better than someone else and not as good as someone else.”
William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer
The Resurrection of a Life (1935)
“Our democracy has been around far longer than European democracy.”
Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady
European Parliament, Brussels, March 6, 2009. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/19718.html <br class="br">Secretary of State (2009–2013)
Steve Maraboli (1975)
Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 154
“Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security.”
Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
“To refuse awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than is normal.”
Peter Ustinov (1921–2004) English actor, writer, and dramatist
BBC obituary (2004)
“By a tranquil mind I mean nothing else than a mind well ordered.”
Marcus Aurelius book Meditations
IV, 3
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book IV
“Whose it gonna be!? Whose it gonna be?! Whoever it is, I am better than them!”
Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist
2010
Friday Night SmackDown
“Truth is stranger than fiction — to some people, but I am measurably familiar with it.”
Mark Twain book Following the Equator
Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. XV
Following the Equator (1897)
“We humans are more complicated than animals, and we love through the imagination.”
George Moore (novelist) (1852–1933) Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist
Source: Memoirs of My Dead Life http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8mmdl10.txt (1906), Ch. 6: Spent Loves.
“A sign of a celebrity is often that his name is worth more than his services.”
Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American historian
Source: The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961), p. 220.
“I have always considered my face a convenience rather than an ornament.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician
Letter http://books.google.com/books?id=sIE7AAAAYAAJ&q=%22I+have+always+considered+my+face+a+convenience+rather+than+an+ornament%22&pg=PA103#v=onpage to James Russell Lowell (18 March 1882)
“An army of sheep led by a lion is better than an army of lions led by a sheep.”
Alexander the Great (-356–-323 BC) King of Macedon
Attributed to Alexander, as quoted in The British Battle Fleet: Its Inception and Growth Throughout the Centuries to the Present Day (1915) by Frederick Thomas Jane, but many variants of similar statements exist which have been attributed to others, though in research done for Wikiquote definite citations of original documents have not yet been found for any of them:
I should prefer an army of stags led by a lion, to an army of lions led by a stag.
Attributed to Chabrias, who died around the time Alexander was born, thus his is the earliest life to whom such assertions have been attributed; as quoted in A Treatise on the Defence of Fortified Places (1814) by Lazare Carnot, p. 50
An army of stags led by a lion would be better than an army of lions led by a stag.
Attributed to Chabrias, A History of Ireland (1857) by Thomas Mooney, p. 760
An army of stags led by a lion is superior to an army of lions led by a stag.
Attributed to Chabrias, The New American Cyclopaedia : A Popular Dictionary of General Knowledge (1863), Vol. 4, p. 670
An army of sheep led by a lion are more to be feared than an army of lions led by a sheep.
Attributed to Chabrias, The Older We Get, The Better We Were, Marine Corps Sea Stories (2004) by Vince Crawley, p. 67
It is better to have sheep led by a lion than lions led by a sheep.
Attributed to Polybius in Between Spenser and Swift: English Writing in Seventeenth Century Ireland (2005) by Deana Rankin, p. 124, citing A Contemporary History of Affairs in Ireland, from 1641 to 1652 (1880) by John Thomas Gilbert Vol. I, i, p. 153 - 157; but conceivably this might be reference to Polybius the historian quoting either Alexander or Chabrias.
An army composed of sheep but led by a lion is more powerful than an army of lions led by a sheep.
"Proverb" quoted by Agostino Nifo in De Regnandi Peritia (1523) as cited in Machiavelli - The First Century: Studies in Enthusiasm, Hostility, and Irrelevance (2005) by Mathew Thomson, p. 55
Greater is an army of sheep led by a lion, than an army of lions led by a sheep.
Attributed to Daniel Defoe (c. 1659 - 1731)
I am more afraid of one hundred sheep led by a lion than one hundred lions led by a sheep.
Attributed to Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754 – 1838) Variants: I am more afraid of an army of 100 sheep led by a lion than an army of 100 lions led by a sheep.
I am not afraid of an army of one hundred lions led by a sheep. I am afraid of army of 100 sheeps led by a lion.
Variants quoted as an anonymous proverb:
Better a herd of sheep led by a lion than a herd of lions led by a sheep.
A flock of sheep led by a lion was more powerful than a flock of lions led by a sheep.
An army of sheep led by a lion would defeat an army of lions led by a sheep.
It were better to have an army of sheep led by a lion than an army of lions led by a sheep.
An army of sheep led by a lion, will defeat an army of lions led by a sheep.
An army of sheep led by a lion would be superior to an army of lions led by a sheep.
Unsourced attribution to Alexander: I would not fear a pack of lions led by a sheep, but I would always fear a flock of sheep led by a lion.
As one lion overcomes many people and as one wolf scatters many sheep, so likewise will I, with one word, destroy the peoples who have come against me.
This slightly similar statement is the only quote relating to lions in The History of Alexander the Great, Being the Syriac Version of the Pseudo-Callisthenes (1889) as translated by E. A. Wallis Budge, but it is attributed to Nectanebus (Nectanebo II).
Disputed
“Than Timoleon's arms require,
And Tully's curule chair, and Milton's golden lyre.”
Mark Akenside (1721–1770) English poet and physician
Book I, Ode XVII: "On a Sermon against Glory", stanza ii, lines 17–18
Odes on Several Subjects (1745)