1910s

The Egoist · 1915

★ 7.1

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

T.S. Eliot

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock · 1915

★ 7.1

Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

Marthe Troly-Curtin

Phrynette Married · 1912

★ 6.9

Truth is the first casualty in war.

Ethel Snowden

Women and War · 1915

★ 6.9

Novel · Magazine · Modernist literature

His heart danced upon her movements like a cork upon a tide. He heard what her eyes said to him from beneath their cowl and knew that in some dim past, whether in life or reverie, he had heard their tale before.

The Egoist · 1915

★ 6.9

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen

Dulce et Decorum Est · 1918

★ 6.9

What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare?

W.H. Davies

1911

★ 6.9

It's what we learn after we think we know it all that counts.

Frank McKinney Hubbard

1913

★ 6.9

To be born is to be wrecked on an island.

J.M. Barrie

1913

★ 6.9

Essay · Magazine

Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.

Louis Brandeis

1913

★ 6.9

Short story

I'd rather sing one wild song and burst my heart with it, than live a thousand years watching my digestion and being afraid of the wet.

Jack London

1916

★ 6.9

I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

Jack London

1916

★ 6.7

Lecture · Psychological literature

We believe that civilization has been created under the pressure of the exigencies of life at the cost of satisfaction of the instincts.

Sigmund Freud

Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis · 1917

★ 6.3

Speech · Autobiography and memoir

Life does not consist mainly—or even largely—of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever blowing through one's head.

Mark Twain

Mark Twain's Autobiography · 1910

★ 6.2

Song

I want a girl just like the girl That married dear old dad.

William Dillon

1911

★ 6.0

My center is giving way, my right is retreating, situation excellent, I am attacking.

Ferdinand Foch

1914

★ 6.0

Sociology

God at bottom is nothing but an exalted father.

Sigmund Freud

Totem and Taboo · 1913

★ 5.5

Autobiography and memoir · Autobiography and memoir

In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination.

Mark Twain

The Autobiography of Mark Twain · 1910

★ 5.5

The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.

Willa Cather

O Pioneers! · 1913

★ 5.5

Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky.

T.S. Eliot

1915

★ 5.5

Short story

My body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.

I desire to press in my arms the loveliness which has not yet come into the world.

Araby · 1914

★ 5.4

Novel · Modernist literature

The world must be made safe for democracy.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man · 1915

★ 5.4

Speech · Political speech

Woodrow Wilson

1917

★ 5.4

Political literature · Historical literature

Freedom is always freedom for the one who thinks differently.

Rosa Luxemburg

The Russian Revolution · 1919

★ 5.4

Speech · Political speech

My position as regards the moneyed interests can be put in a few words. In every civilized society property rights must be carefully safeguarded; ordinarily, and in the great majority of cases, human rights and property rights are fundamentally and in the long run identical; but when it clearly appears that there is a real conflict between them, human rights must have the upper hand, for property belongs to man and not man to property.

Theodore Roosevelt

1910

★ 5.3

Who knows what true loneliness is—not the conventional word, but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion. Now and then a fatal conjunction of events may lift the veil for an instant. For an instant only. No human being could bear a steady view of moral solitude without going mad.

Joseph Conrad

Under Western Eyes · 1911

★ 5.3

Speech

Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

1911

★ 5.3

Novel · Modernist literature

Once I had recognized the taste of the crumb of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime flowers which my aunt used to give me... Immediately the old gray house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like the scenery of a theater.

Marcel Proust

In Search of Lost Time · 1913

★ 5.3

Psychological literature

If a man has been his mother's undisputed darling he retains throughout life the triumphant feeling, the confidence in success, which not seldom brings actual success with it.

Sigmund Freud

1917

★ 5.3

Railway termini... Are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, alas! we return.

E.M. Forster

Howards End · 1910

★ 5.2

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in.

Robert Frost

1914

★ 5.2

Short story

I am a lover and have not found my thing to love.

Sherwood Anderson

1919

★ 5.2

Poem · War poetry

If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England.

Rupert Brooke

The Soldier · 1914

★ 5.1

The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.

Sir Edward Grey

1914

★ 5.1

I have a rendezvous with Death At some disputed barricade, When Spring comes back with rustling shade And apple-blossoms fill the air.

Alan Seeger

1916

★ 5.1