Quotes · Skopia

103 quotes

One of the pleasantest things in the world is going a journey, but I like to go by myself. I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors, nature is company enough for me. I am then never less alone than when alone.

William Hazlitt

On Going on a Journey · 1822

★ 0.9

Autobiography and memoir

Words have weight, sound, and appearance; it is only by considering these that you can write a sentence that is good to look at and good to listen to.

W. Somerset Maugham

1948

★ 0.9

Learning that color is a fiction of light is one of the primary shocks of growing up: that this hitherto deeply physical thing is just a reflection and that nothing can keep its color under the cover of darkness, are monstrous things to understand, even for my adult mind.

Tacita Dean

★ 0.9

Speech · Scientific literature

The science of Pure Mathematics, in its modern developments, may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit.

Alfred North Whitehead

1925

★ 1.0

Poem

For when this song is sung and past, My lute, be still, for I have done.

Thomas Wyatt

1557

★ 1.1

Play · Tragedy (play) · Tragedy

Accurst be he that first invented war.

Christopher Marlowe

Tamburlaine the Great · 1587

★ 1.1

Love ceases to be a Pleasure, when it ceases to be a Secret.

Aphra Behn

1686

★ 1.2

Comedy (play) · Comedy

Oh, what a dear ravishing thing is the beginning of an Amour!

Aphra Behn

The Emperor of the Moon · 1687

★ 1.2

Novel

Pride is one of the seven deadly sins; but it cannot be the pride of a mother in her children, for that is a compound of two cardinal virtues—faith and hope.

Charles Dickens

The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby · 1839

★ 1.2

Short story

He had read Shakespeare and found him weak in chemistry.

H.G. Wells

1894

★ 1.2

Novel

Subdue your appetites my dears, and you've conquered human nature.

Charles Dickens

The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby · 1838

★ 1.3

Novel

The one great principle of the English law is to make business for itself.

Charles Dickens

Bleak House · 1853

★ 1.3

Novel · Coming of age story

I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.

Charles Dickens

Great Expectations · 1860

★ 1.3

Treatise

In architecture as in all other operative arts, the end must direct the operation. The end is to build well. Well building hath three conditions. Commodity, firmness, and delight.

Henry Wotton

1624

★ 1.8

Essay

Comedy naturally wears itself out-destroys the very food on which it lives; and by constantly and successfully exposing the follies and weaknesses of mankind to ridicule, in the end leaves itself nothing worth laughing at.

William Hazlitt

1817

★ 1.8

Novel

It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.

W. Somerset Maugham

1919

★ 1.8

Novel

From the earliest times the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser than they, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this was they were old too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture.

W. Somerset Maugham

Cakes and Ale · 1930

★ 1.8

Philosophical literature

It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true…But of course a true proposition is more apt to be interesting than a false one.

Alfred North Whitehead

Adventures of Ideas · 1933

★ 1.8

Religious literature · Philosophical literature

Zen is a liberation from time. For if we open our eyes and see clearly, it becomes obvious that there is no other time than this instant, and that the past and the future are abstractions without any concrete reality.

Alan Watts

The Way of Zen · 1957

★ 1.8

Sonnet · Poem

With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies! How silently, and with how wan a face!

Philip Sidney

Astrophel and Stella · 1591

★ 1.9

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