The Quotes canon
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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Classical antiquity158 quotes
Fortune favors the brave. — Virgil · 19 BCAbsence makes the heart grow fonder. — Sextus Propertius · 24 BCSeize the day, put no trust in the morrow! — Horace · 23 BCLove conquers all things; let us too surrender to love. — Virgil · 37 BCAll men have need of the Gods. — Homer · 700 BCZeus does not bring all men's plans to fulfillment. — Homer · 700 BCAll 158 quotes →The Renaissance74 quotes
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date. — William Shakespeare · 1609Long is the way
And hard, that out of Hell leads up to Light. — John Milton · 1667O fairest of Creation, last and best
Of all God's works. — John Milton · 1667But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall Death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st.
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. — William Shakespeare · 1609Her rash hand in evil hour
Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she ate:
Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat
Sighing through all her works gave signs of woe
That all was lost. — John Milton · 1667Of Man's First Disobedience, and the fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,
Sing, Heav'nly Muse. — John Milton · 1667All 74 quotes →Age of Enlightenment42 quotes
And with the guts of the last priest
Let's wring the neck of the last king. — Denis Diderot · 1772Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never is, but always to be blessed. — Alexander Pope · 1733Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. — Alexander Pope · 1711To err is human, to forgive divine. — Alexander Pope · 1711The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men,
Gang aft a-gley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief and pain,
For promis'd joy. — Robert Burns · 1785A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again. — Alexander Pope · 1711All 42 quotes →Middle Ages23 quotes
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. — Dante Alighieri · 1321Consider your origin;
you were not born to live like brutes,
but to follow virtue and knowledge. — Dante Alighieri · 1321When I had journeyed half of our life's way,
I found myself within a shadowed forest,
for I had lost the path that does not stray. — Dante Alighieri · 1321Haste denies all acts their dignity. — Dante Alighieri · 1321Thence we came forth to see the stars again. — Dante Alighieri · 1321My course is set for an uncharted sea. — Dante Alighieri · 1321All 23 quotes →Ancient World2 quotes
When a pair of magpies fly together
They do not envy the pair of phoenixes. — Lady Ho · 300 BCFrom the days of old there is no permanence. The sleeping and the dead, how alike they are, they are like a painted death. What is there between the master and the servant when both have fulfilled their doom? — The Epic of Gilgamesh · 1000 BCAncient Egypt1 quote
There is no one who returns from beyond
that he may tell of their state
that he may tell of their lot
that he may set our hearts at ease
until we make our journey
to the place where they have gone. — Harper's Songs · 1700 BC