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My soul, what's lighter than a feather? Wind.
Than wind? The fire. And what than fire? The mind.
What's lighter than the mind? A thought. Than thought?
This bubble world. What than this bubble? Nought.

— Francis Quarles

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Society

More quotes by Francis Quarles

The next way home's the farthest way about.

Emblems (1635)

Death aims with fouler spite
At fairer marks.

Luxury is an enticing pleasure, a bastard mirth, which hath honey in her mouth, gall in her heart, and a sting in her tail.

Let the fear of a danger be a spur to prevent it: He that fears otherwise, gives advantage to the danger.

Enchiridion (1640)

Even such is man, whose glory lends
His life a blaze or two, and ends.

Hos ego versiculos (1629)

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.

William Shakespeare As You Like It (1599)

One country, one constitution, one destiny.

Daniel Webster

Since, in the long run, every planetary society will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring — not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive.

Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Francis Quarles (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.