Sourced and curated.

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.

On Going on a Journey · 1822

★ 0.9

Autobiography and memoir

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.

1948

★ 0.9

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.

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

1925

★ 1.0

Poem

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

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.

He had read Shakespeare and found him weak in chemistry.

The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby · 1839

★ 1.2

Short story

1894

★ 1.2

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

The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby · 1838

★ 1.3

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

Bleak House · 1853

★ 1.3

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.

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.

Great Expectations · 1860

★ 1.3

Treatise

Henry Wotton

1624

★ 1.8

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.

1817

★ 1.8

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

1919

★ 1.8

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.

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.

Cakes and Ale · 1930

★ 1.8

Philosophical literature

Religious literature · Philosophical literature

Adventures of Ideas · 1933

★ 1.8

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

Play · Tragedy (play)

I count religion but a childish toy, and hold there is no sin but ignorance.

Christopher Marlowe

The Jew of Malta · 1593

★ 1.9

Who shoots at the mid-day sun, though he be sure he shall never hit the mark; yet as sure he is he shall shoot higher than who aims but at a bush.

Philip Sidney

1593

★ 1.9

An ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.

Henry Wotton

1604

★ 1.9

The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.

1819

★ 1.9

Every man, in his own opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of morality.

We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it.

1823

★ 1.9

On Prejudice · 1839

★ 1.9

The Social Contract is nothing more or less than a vast conspiracy of human beings to lie to and humbug themselves and one another for the general Good. Lies are the mortar that bind the savage individual man into the social masonry.

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.

1899

★ 1.9

Scientific literature

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.

1911

★ 1.9

Historical literature

I put forward as a general definition of civilization, that a civilized society is exhibiting the five qualities of Truth, Beauty, Adventure, Art, Peace.

1920

★ 1.9

Philosophical literature

The whole human memory can be, and probably in a short time will be, made accessible to every individual.

Adventures of Ideas · 1933

★ 1.9

Essay · Magazine

The only way to be new is constantly to change yourself, and the only way to be original is to increase, enlarge, deepen your own personality.

1937

★ 1.9

Personal journal

1949

★ 1.9

A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man.

It takes all sorts to make a world.

1839

★ 1.9

Douglas Jerrold

1844

★ 1.9

Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.

Of Human Bondage · 1915

★ 1.9

Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.

The tragedy of love is indifference.

Of Human Bondage · 1915

★ 1.9

Short story

1921

★ 1.9

People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.

Rationalism is an adventure in the clarification of thought.

1915

★ 2.0

Essay · Philosophical literature

1928

★ 2.0

There were two classes of charitable people; one, the people who did a little and made a great deal of noise; the other, the people who did a great deal and made no noise at all.

Bleak House · 1852

★ 2.1

Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.

Our Mutual Friend · 1865

★ 2.1

Here’s the rule for bargains—“Do other men, for they would do you.” That’s the true business precept.

The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit · 1843

★ 2.2

Constancy in love is a good thing, but it means nothing, and is nothing, without constancy in every kind of effort.

Bleak House · 1852

★ 2.2

There is a wisdom of the Head, and...a wisdom of the Heart.

Hard Times: For These Times · 1854

★ 2.2

Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There's no better rule.

Great Expectations · 1861

★ 2.2

Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching… I have been bent and broken, but—I hope—into a better shape.

Great Expectations · 1861

★ 2.2

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.

Great Expectations · 1861

★ 2.2

There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.

A Christmas Carol · 1843

★ 2.3

Trifles make the sum of life.

I will honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year.

The Personal History of David Copperfield · 1850

★ 2.3

Novella

The English speaking world may be divided into (1) those who neither know nor care what a split infinitive is; (2) those who do not know, but care very much; (3) those who know and condemn; (4) those who know and approve; (5) those who know and distinguish. Those who neither know nor care are the vast majority and are a happy folk, to be envied by the most of the minority classes.

A Christmas Carol · 1843

★ 3.1

H.W. Fowler

1926

★ 3.4

Scientific literature

It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle-they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.

The religious vision, and its history of persistent expansion, is our one ground for optimism. Apart from it, human life is a flash of occasional enjoyments lighting up a mass of pain and misery, a bagatelle of transient experience.

An Introduction to Mathematics · 1911

★ 3.5

Lecture

Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, And burnt the topless towers of Ilium? Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss!

Religion and Science · 1925

★ 3.5

Play · Tragedy (play)

Christopher Marlowe

Doctor Faustus · 1593

★ 3.5

Danger is a good teacher, and makes apt scholars. So are disgrace, defeat, exposure to immediate scorn, and laughter.

The Indian Jugglers · 1821

★ 3.5

By despising all that has preceded us, we teach others to despise ourselves.

The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.

1827

★ 3.5

Play · Comedy (play)

1921

★ 3.5

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

Religious literature · Philosophical literature

1928

★ 3.5

Whether we like it or not, change comes, and the greater the resistance, the greater the pain.

Alan Watts

1995

★ 3.5