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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Jonathan Swift14 quotes
Men are never so serious, thoughtful, and intent as when they are at stool. — Jonathan Swift · 1726Vision is the art of seeing things invisible. — Jonathan Swift · 1745He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put into vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers. — Jonathan Swift · 1726I said there was a society of men among us bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for the purpose that white is black and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are slaves. — Jonathan Swift · 1726There’s none so blind as they that won’t see. — Jonathan Swift · 1738Every man desires to live long; but no man would be old. — Jonathan Swift · 1727All 14 quotes →Voltaire10 quotes
All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. — Voltaire · 1759If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others? — Voltaire · 1759I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away? — Voltaire · 1759We must cultivate our garden. — Voltaire · 1759Work keeps at bay three great evils: boredom, vice, and need. — Voltaire · 1759She blushed and so did he. She greeted him in a faltering voice, and he spoke to her without knowing what he was saying. — Voltaire · 1759All 10 quotes →Sinclair Lewis7 quotes
What is Love?... It is the morning and the evening star. — Sinclair Lewis · 1927I'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. — Sinclair Lewis · 1922Thus it came to him merely to run away was folly, because he could never run away from himself. — Sinclair Lewis · 1922But 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. — Sinclair Lewis · 1922The 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. — Sinclair Lewis · 1927Most 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. — Sinclair Lewis · 1920All 7 quotes →Francois Rabelais3 quotes
Speak the truth and shame the Devil. — Francois Rabelais · 1564To laugh is proper to man. — Francois Rabelais · 1534Appetite comes with eating. — Francois Rabelais · 1534John Dryden3 quotes
Great wits are sure to madness near allied
And thin partitions do their bounds divide. — John Dryden · 1681For who can be secure of private right,
If sovereign sway may be dissolved by might?
Nor is the people's judgement always true:
The most may err as grossly as the few. — John Dryden · 1681Nor is the people's judgment always true:
The most may err as grossly as the few. — John Dryden · 1681Richard Brinsley Sheridan3 quotes
Certainly nothing is unnatural that is not physically impossible. — Richard Brinsley Sheridan · 1779The number of those who undergo the fatigue of judging for themselves is very small indeed. — Richard Brinsley Sheridan · 1779There is not a passion so strongly rooted in the human heart as envy. — Richard Brinsley Sheridan · 1779Thomas More3 quotes
They wonder much to hear that gold, which in itself is so useless a thing, should be everywhere so much esteemed, that even men for whom it was made, and by whom it has its value, should yet be thought of less value than it is. — Thomas More · 1516They have no lawyers among them, for they consider them as a sort of people whose profession it is to disguise matters. — Thomas More · 1516Anyone who campaigns for public office becomes disqualified for holding any office at all. — Thomas More · 1516Ben Jonson2 quotes
True happinesse
Consists not in the multitude of friends,
But in the worth, and choice. — Ben Jonson · 1600There shall be no love lost. — Ben Jonson · 1599George Bernard Shaw2 quotes
The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me. — George Bernard Shaw · 1898People 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 · 1898Oliver Goldsmith2 quotes
Our greatest glory is, not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. — Oliver Goldsmith · 1761A 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 · 1761A.P. Herbert1 quote
The critical period in matrimony is breakfast-time. — A.P. Herbert · 1935Chuck Palahniuk1 quote
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 · 2003Daniel Defoe1 quote
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 · 1701Juvenal1 quote
All wish to be learned, but no one is willing to pay the price. — Juvenal · 100Octave1 quote
Everyone has their reasons. — Octave · 1939Stephen Leacock1 quote
Advertising may be described as the science of arresting human intelligence long enough to get money from it. — Stephen Leacock · 1924