1850s · Skopia

Showing 262 quotes from the 1850s

There is grandeur in this view of life...whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

Charles Darwin

On the Origin of Species · 1859

★ 9.8

Sonnet · Poem

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the end of Being and ideal Grace.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

1850

★ 9.3

Sermon

I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one... But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.

Theodore Parker

1853

★ 8.7

Poem

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.

Walt Whitman

Song of Myself · 1855

★ 8.1

Poem

I celebrate myself, and sing myself.

Walt Whitman

Song of Myself · 1855

★ 8.1

Poem

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Walt Whitman

Song of Myself · 1855

★ 8.0

Essay · Philosophical literature · Political literature

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.

John Stuart Mill

On Liberty · 1859

★ 7.9

Scientific literature

I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection.

Charles Darwin

On the Origin of the Species · 1859

★ 7.9

Autobiography and memoir

Our life is frittered away by detail…. Simplify, simplify.

Henry David Thoreau

Walden · 1854

★ 7.8

Autobiography and memoir

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

Henry David Thoreau

Walden · 1854

★ 7.8

Poem

I celebrate myself and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

Walt Whitman

Song of Myself · 1855

★ 7.4

Novel · Historical literature

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Charles Dickens

A Tale of Two Cities · 1859

★ 7.4

Speech · Political speech

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

Frederick Douglass

1857

★ 7.3

Essay · Historical literature · Political literature

Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

Karl Marx

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte · 1852

★ 7.1

Autobiography and memoir

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

Henry David Thoreau

Walden · 1854

★ 7.1

Autobiography and memoir

I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

Henry David Thoreau

Walden · 1854

★ 7.1

Autobiography and memoir

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Henry David Thoreau

Walden · 1854

★ 7.1

Novel

There is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.

Herman Melville

Moby-Dick; or, The Whale · 1851

★ 7.1

Speech · Political speech

It is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

Frederick Douglass

What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? · 1852

★ 7.0

Speech · Political speech

A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.

Abraham Lincoln

1858

★ 7.0

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