„Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet.“

Confessions Of A Sceptic
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)
Kontext: You will never have perfect men, Plato says, till you have perfect circumstances. Perhaps a true saying! — but, till the philosopher is born who can tell us what circumstances are perfect, a sufficiently speculative one. At any rate, one finds strange enough results — often the very best coming up out of conditions the most unpromising. Such a bundle of odd contradictions we human beings are, that perhaps full as many repellent as attracting influences are acquired, before we can give our hearts to what is right.

Quelle: Betsy and the Great World / Betsy's Wedding

Jamais nous ne goûtons de parfaite allégresse:
Nos plus heureux succès sont mêlés de tristesse.
Don Diègue, act III, scene v.
Le Cid (1636)

Quelle: The Truth About Forever

Quelle: Leaves of Grass

Regards upcoming elections in Iraq http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2005/s1283005.htm, January 14, 2005.
2000s

As quoted in Voices of Liberation: Albert Lutuli (1993).
Resist apartheid! (1954)
Kontext: The laws and policies of white South Africa are no doubt inimical to this development. And so I call upon our people in all walks of life ministers of the Gospel of Christ, who died to save human dignity, teachers, professional men, business men; farmers and workers to rally round the congress at this hour to make our voice heard. We may be voteless, but we are not necessarily voiceless; it is our determination more than ever before in the life of our congress, to have our voice not only heard but heeded too. Through gatherings like this in all centres, large and small, we mean to mobilize our people to speak with this one voice and say to white South Africa: We have no designs to elbow anyone out of South Africa, but equally we have no intention whatsoever of abandoning our divine right, of ourselves determining our destiny according to the holy and perfect plan of our Creator. Apartheid can never be such a plan.

Haven (1951)

"Ich bin ein Berliner" Speech, June 26, 1963, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ich_bin_ein_Berliner_Speech_(June_26,_1963)_John_Fitzgerald_Kennedy_trimmed.theora.ogv
Kontext: Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us. [... ] While the wall is the most obvious and vivid demonstration of the failures of the Communist system, for all the world to see, we take no satisfaction in it, for it is, as your Mayor has said, an offense not only against history but an offense against humanity, separating families, dividing husbands and wives and brothers and sisters, and dividing a people who wish to be joined together.

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 596.

Quelle: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 161

"Suicides"

Quelle: Styxx

Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, Chapter 5

Quelle: All the Light We Cannot See

Old Pictures in Florence, xvi.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)