Sourced and curated.

The Stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.

1711

★ 1.2

Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their long beards, and pretences to foretell events.

1727

★ 1.2

A man who leaves home to mend himself and others is a philosopher; but he who goes from country to county, guided by the blind impulse of curiosity, is only a vagabond.

Oliver Goldsmith

1761

★ 1.8

Most troubles are unnecessary. We have Nature beaten; we can make her grow wheat; we can keep warm when she sends blizzards. So we raise the devil just for pleasure-wars, politics, race-hatreds, labor-disputes.

Main Street · 1920

★ 1.9

I think perhaps we want a more conscious life. We're tired of drudging and sleeping and dying. We're tired of seeing just a few people able to be individualists. We're tired of always deferring hope till the next generation. We're tired of hearing politicians and priests and cautious reformers...coax us, "Be calm! Be patient! Wait! We have the plans for a Utopia already made; just give us a bit more time and we’ll produce it; trust us; we're wiser than you." For ten thousand years they've said that. We want our Utopia now-and we're going to try our hands at it.

Main Street · 1920

★ 1.9

But I do know that about ten times as many people find their lives dull, and unnecessarily dull, as ever admit it; and I do believe that if we busted out and admitted it sometimes, instead of being nice and patient and loyal for sixty years, and then nice and patient and dead for the rest of eternity, why, maybe, possibly, we might make life more fun.

Babbitt · 1922

★ 1.9

The Maker of a universe with stars a hundred thousand light-years apart was interested, furious, and very personal about it if a small boy played baseball on Sunday afternoon.

There is not a passion so strongly rooted in the human heart as envy.

Elmer Gantry · 1927

★ 1.9

Play · Satire (play) · Satire

Richard Brinsley Sheridan

The Critic · 1779

★ 1.9

Thus it came to him merely to run away was folly, because he could never run away from himself.

Anyone who campaigns for public office becomes disqualified for holding any office at all.

Babbitt · 1922

★ 1.9

Satire · Political literature

Thomas More

Utopia · 1516

★ 2.0

Play · Comedy (play) · Satire · Comedy

There shall be no love lost.

Ben Jonson

Every Man out of His Humour · 1599

★ 2.0

Satire

Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own.

I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.

1704

★ 2.0

Travel writing · Satire

Gulliver's Travels · 1726

★ 2.0

Appetite comes with eating.

Francois Rabelais

Gargantua and Pantagruel · 1534

★ 2.2

Let us work without reasoning, it is the only way to make life endurable.

Everyone has their reasons.

Candide · 1759

★ 2.2

Film · Drama (film) · Satire (film) · Drama · Satire

Octave

The Rules of the Game · 1939

★ 2.8

Play · Drama (play) · Satire

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.

George Bernard Shaw

1898

★ 3.5

Advertising may be described as the science of arresting human intelligence long enough to get money from it.

Stephen Leacock

1924

★ 3.5

Poem · Satire

Wherever God erects a house of prayer, The Devil always builds a chapel there; And 'twill be found upon examination, The latter has the largest congregation.

Daniel Defoe

1701

★ 3.5

Our greatest glory is, not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

Oliver Goldsmith

The Citizen of the World · 1761

★ 3.5

Play · Satire (play) · Satire

The number of those who undergo the fatigue of judging for themselves is very small indeed.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan

The Critic · 1779

★ 3.5

Novel · Horror · Satire

It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.

Chuck Palahniuk

2003

★ 3.5

Play · Satire

True happinesse Consists not in the multitude of friends, But in the worth, and choice.

Ben Jonson

Cynthia's Revels, or The Fountain of Self-Love · 1600

★ 3.6

Poem · Satire

Nor is the people's judgment always true: The most may err as grossly as the few.

John Dryden

Absalom and Achitophel · 1681

★ 3.6

Play · Satire (play) · Satire

Certainly nothing is unnatural that is not physically impossible.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan

The Critic · 1779

★ 3.6

I've never done a single thing I've wanted to in my whole life! I don't know 's I've accomplished anything except just get along.

Babbitt · 1922

★ 3.6

When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign; that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.

1711

★ 3.7

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

They will never allow that a child is under any obligation to his father for begetting him, or his mother for bringing him into the world - which, considering the miseries of human life, was neither a benefit in itself nor intended so by his parents, whose thoughts in their love encounters were otherwise employed.

1711

★ 3.7

Satire · Travel writing

Whoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before would deserve better of mankind and do more essential service to his country than the whole race of politicians put together.

Gulliver's Travels · 1726

★ 3.7

Satire · Travel writing

Gulliver's Travels · 1726

★ 3.7

All events are linked together in the best of possible worlds; for, after all, if you had not been driven from a fine castle by being kicked in the backside for love of Miss Cunégonde, if you hadn’t been sent before the Inquisition, if you hadn’t traveled across America on foot, if you hadn’t given a good sword thrust to the baron, if you hadn’t lost all your sheep from the good land of Eldorado, you wouldn’t be sitting here eating candied citron and pistachios.

Candide · 1759

★ 3.7

Do you believe that men have always massacred each other as they do to-day, that they have always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, envious, ambitious, bloody-minded, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools?

Candide · 1759

★ 3.7

Even in those cities which seem to enjoy the blessings of peace, and where the arts flourish, the inhabitants are devoured by envy, cares and anxieties, which are greater plagues than any experienced in a town when it is under siege.

All wish to be learned, but no one is willing to pay the price.

Candide · 1759

★ 3.7

Poem · Satire

Juvenal

Satires · 100

★ 3.8

Every man desires to live long; but no man would be old.

There’s none so blind as they that won’t see.

1727

★ 3.8

Satire

1738

★ 3.8

She blushed and so did he. She greeted him in a faltering voice, and he spoke to her without knowing what he was saying.

Candide · 1759

★ 3.8

We must cultivate our garden.

Candide · 1759

★ 3.9

Work keeps at bay three great evils: boredom, vice, and need.