Quotes
You can write the name of a quote, author or book among thousands of quotes.
Finnegan's Wake
"They lived and laughed and loved and left."
The importance of Being Earnest
"I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone."
Of Mice and Men
"Just like heaven. Ever'body wants a little piece of lan'. I read plenty of books out here. Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. It's just in their head. They're all the time talkin' about it, but it's jus' in their head."
East Of Eden
"Perhaps it takes courage to raise children."
Persuasion
"It was, perhaps, one of those cases in which advice is good or bad only as the event decides."
Fragment
"We should enjoy good fortune while we have it, like the fruits of autumn."
A Midsummer Night's Dream
"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind."
The Canterville Ghost
"Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace."
Oliver Twist
"Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine."
Fragment
"As nothing is straighter than that which is straight, so nothing is juster than that which is just."
Reflections on Literature and Morality
"I have my own virtue, which I am constantly cultivating and refining by teaching myself not to tolerate in me or my surroundings anything but the exquisite."
Dubliners
"Love between man and man is impossible because there must not be sexual intercourse and friendship between man and woman is impossible because there must be sexual intercourse."
Republic
"“The power and capacity of learning exists in the soul already; and that just as the eye was unable to turn from darkness to light without the whole body, so too the instrument of knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the world of becoming into that of being, and learn by degrees to endure the sight of being, and of the brightest and best of being, or in other words, of the good.”"
Never Give In!
"Never give in — never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."
Never Give In!
"Where my reason, imagination or interest were not engaged, I would not or I could not learn."
Nicholas Nickleby
"Although a skillful flatterer is a most delightful companion if you have him all to yourself, his taste becomes very doubtful when he takes to complimenting other people."
The Critic as Artist
"What people call insincerity is simply a method by which we can multiply our personalities."
The Complete Sherlock Holmes
"It is easy to be wise after the event."
Book I
"From Apollonius, true liberty, and unvariable steadfastness, and not to regard anything at all, though never so little, but right and reason: and always..that it was possible for the same man to be both vehement and remiss: a man not subject to be vexed, and offended with the incapacity of his scholars and auditors in his lectures and expositions."
Surrounded by Idiots
"“It’s all about the mask you wear to fit into a given situation. We all have several different masks. Having one at work and one at home isn’t that unusual. And another one for visiting the in-laws, perhaps.”"
Book II
"The longest-lived and the shortest-lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same thing."
The Analects of Confucius
" "He with whom neither slander that gradually soaks into the mind, nor statements that startle like a wound in the flesh, are successful may be called intelligent indeed.""
Autumn Leaves
"In hell there is no other punishment than to begin over and over again the tasks left unfinished in your lifetime."
Essays
"Those that will combat use and custom by the strict rules of grammar do but jest. "
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
"Ah, only he who knows where he sails, knows what wind is good, and a fair wind for him."
Tortilla Flat
"In no social institution is the codified ritual of behavior more rigid than in funerals. Imagine the indignation if the minister altered his sermon or experimented with facial expression. Consider the shock if, at the funeral parlors, any chairs were used but those little folding yellow torture chairs with the hard seats. No, dying, a man may be loved, hated, mourned, missed; but once dead he becomes the chief ornament of a complicated and formal social celebration."
Stages on Life's Way
"A son is a mirror in which the father sees himself reflected, and the father is a mirror in which the son sees himself as he will be in the future."
Le Pere Goriot
"I am tormented by temptations." "What kind? There is a cure for temptation." "What?" "Yielding to it.“"
The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A F*Ck
"The world is constantly telling you that path to a better life is more (…) You are constantly bombarded with messages to give a fuck about everything all the time (…) Why? My guess: because giving a fuck about more is good for business."
Oliver Twist
"There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts."
The Fifth Mountain
"There are moments when troubles enter our lives and we can do nothing to avoid them. But they are there for a reason. Only when we have overcome them will we understand why they were there."
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
"It is the good war that hallows every cause."
Richard III
"A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!"
History as a System
"Man is a substantial emigrant on a pilgrimage of being, and it is accordingly meaningless to set limits to what he is capable of being."
East Of Eden
"Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids."
The Soul of Man Under Socialism
"The note of the perfect personality is not rebellion, but peace."
Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman
"For one who is having no personal experience, the passionate disquiet of others is at any rate a titillation of the nerves, like seeing a play or listening to music."
Demian
"Every person’s life is a journey toward himself,"
The Post Office Girl
"Something indefinite is always worse than something definite, a strong fear that doesn't last very long is easier than one that's nebulous but doesn't go away."
The Importance of Being Earnest
"All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy."
Midnight Library
"“Love and laughter and fear and pain are universal currencies.”"
Fragment
"In banquets remember that you entertain two guests, body and soul: and whatever you shall have given to the body you soon eject: but what you shall have given to the soul, you keep always."
Essays
"It is a disaster that wisdom forbids you to be satisfied with yourself and always sends you away dissatisfied and fearful, whereas stubbornness and foolhardiness fill their hosts with joy and assurance."
Innocents Abroad
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts."
War and Peace
"Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy."
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
""The environment has to be balanced against the economy." This quote portrays environmental concerns as a luxury, views measures to solve environmental problems as incurring a net cost, and considers leaving environmental problems unsolved to be a money-saving device. This one-liner puts the truth exactly backwards. Environmental messes cost us huge sums of money both in the short run and in the long run; cleaning up or preventing those messes saves us huge sums in the long run, and often in the short run as well. In caring for the health of our surroundings, just as of our bodies, it is cheaper and preferable to avoid getting sick than to try to cure illnesses after they have developed."
Book VI
"But if we judge only those things which are in our power to be good or bad, there remains no reason either for finding fault with God or standing in a hostile attitude to man."
Book IV
"Think on this doctrine,—that reasoning beings were created for one another's sake; that to be patient is a branch of justice, and that men sin without intending it."
Future Shock
"Parenthood remains the greatest single preserve of the amateur."
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
"I cook every chance in my pot. And only when it is cooked through do I welcome it as my food."