“For instance, when bread is baked some parts are split at the surface, and these parts which thus open, and have a certain fashion contrary to the purpose of the baker’s art, are beautiful in a manner, and in a peculiar way excite a desire for eating.”
(Marcus Aurelius)
“Examine men’s ruling principles, even those of the wise, what kind of things they avoid, and what kind they pursue.”
(ibid.)
“The hedge fund business is like whale watching in that the biggest risk isn’t a whale hitting the boat. It is that everyone sees a whale, runs to that side, and tips the boat.”
(Scott Bessent, as interviewed by Drobny)
“We are, I know not how, double in ourselves, so that what we believe, we disbelieve, and cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn.”
(Michel de Montaigne)
“We deduce that since no object strikes us entirely by itself, but along with something else, it may perhaps be possible to say what the mixture compounded out of the external object and the thing perceived with it is like, but we would not be able to say what the external object is like by itself.”
(Sextus Empiricus)
“Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘nice doggy’ until you can find a rock.”
(Anonymous)
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
(Voltaire)
“For thou thyself art thine own bait: / That fish, that is not catch'd thereby, / Alas, is wiser far than I.”
(John Donne)
“Life is mostly froth and bubble, / Two things stand like stone. / Kindness in another’s trouble, / Courage in your own.”
(Adam Lindsay Gordon)
“It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
(C.S. Lewis)