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.
The Renaissance471 quotes
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man. — William Shakespeare · 1616In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king. — Erasmus · 1536To be or not to be—that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And, by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep—
No more—and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to—’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep—
To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. — William Shakespeare · 1616Shall 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 · 1667My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep. The more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite. — William Shakespeare · 1597All 471 quotes →Age of Enlightenment211 quotes
In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain... And the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. — Thomas Hobbes · 1651And with the guts of the last priest
Let's wring the neck of the last king. — Denis Diderot · 1772I think, therefore I am. — Rene Descartes · 1637Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never is, but always to be blessed. — Alexander Pope · 1733If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others? — Voltaire · 1759Moreover, in a system of two bodies mutually acting upon each other, since the differences between their centres and the common centre of gravity of both are reciprocally as the bodies, the relative motions of those bodies, whether of approaching to or of receding from that centre, will be equal junong themselves. Therefore since the changes which happen to motions are equal and directed to contrary parts. — Isaac Newton · 1687All 211 quotes →Middle Ages27 quotes
We are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size. — Bernard of Chartres · 1159He loved chivalrie,
Trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisie. — Geoffrey Chaucer · 1400I have freed my soul. — Bernard of Clairvaux · 1152Where true love is, it showeth; it will not feign. — Christine de Pizan · 1399For we do not easily expect evil of those whom we love most. — Peter Abelard · 1132I am dying of thirst by the side of the fountain. — Charles d'Orleans · 1440All 27 quotes →Spanish Golden Age15 quotes
I was so free with him as not to mince the matter. — Miguel de Cervantes · 1605Can we ever have too much of a good thing? — Miguel de Cervantes · 1605You are a king by your own fireside, as much as any monarch in his throne. — Miguel de Cervantes · 1605That's the nature of women... Not to love when we love them, and to love when we love them not. — Miguel de Cervantes · 1605He's a muddle-headed fool, with frequent lucid intervals. — Miguel de Cervantes · 1615Blessed be he that invented sleep. — Miguel de Cervantes · 1615All 15 quotes →Classical antiquity9 quotes
A liar should have a good memory. — Quintilian · 95Conceal a flaw, and the world will imagine the worst. — Martial · 103A man who lives everywhere lives nowhere. — Martial · 103We give to necessity the praise of virtue. — Quintilian · 95Virtue extends our days: he lives two lives who relives his past with pleasure. — Martial · 103For it is feeling and force of imagination that makes us eloquent. — Quintilian · 95All 9 quotes →American Revolutionary Period8 quotes
If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace. — Thomas Paine · 1776Parties must ever exist in a free country. — Edmund Burke · 1775Every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter. — Edmund Burke · 1775We have it in our power to begin the world over again. — Thomas Paine · 1776Monarchy and succession have laid... The world in blood and ashes. — Thomas Paine · 1776Wisdom is not the purchase of a day. — Thomas Paine · 1776All 8 quotes →Colonial America3 quotes
We must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are on us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world. — John Winthrop · 1630We must bear one another's burdens, we must not look only on our own things but also on the things of our brethren. — John Winthrop · 1630He who says there is no such thing as an honest man, you may be sure is himself a knave. — George Berkeley · 1750Age of Exploration1 quote
There must be a beginning of any great matter, but the continuing unto the end until it be thoroughly finished yields the true glory. — Francis Drake · 1587