variety quotes

Variety is the soul of pleasure.

- Brendan Francis Behan
  The Rover, pt.2, act1.

Variety's the spice of life, That gives it all its flavour.

-William Cowper
  The Task, bk.2,'The Timepiece', l.606^7.

So two cheers for democracy: one because it admits varietyand two because it permits criticism. Two cheers are quite enough: there is no occasion to give three. Only Love the Beloved Republic deserves that.

- E(dward) M(organ) Forster
Two Cheers for Democracy,'What I Believe'. The phrase'Love the Beloved Republic' is taken from Swinburne's poem'Hertha'.

Simplicity, without variety, is wholly insipid.

-William Hogarth
  The Analysis of Beauty.

Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busyand boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from experience.

-John Locke
  Essay Concerning Human Understanding, bk.2, pt.1, section 2.