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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Philosophical literature524 quotes
God is dead: but as the human race is constituted, there will perhaps be caves for millenniums yet, in which people will show his shadow. — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1882Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder. — Socrates · 400 BCThe unexamined life is not worth living. — Socrates · 399 BCIn 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 · 1772Man is the measure of all things. — Protagoras · 420 BCAll 524 quotes →Political literature290 quotes
The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. — Karl Marx · 1848The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. — Karl Marx · 1848In 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 · 1651Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau · 1762From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs! — Karl Marx · 1883Man is by nature a political animal. — Aristotle · 350 BCAll 290 quotes →Religious literature177 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 · 1321Long 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 · 1667Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a prime mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God. — St. Thomas Aquinas · 1265When 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 · 1321All 177 quotes →Tragedy (play)177 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 · 1616To 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 · 1616My 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 · 1597What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable; in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals-And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? — William Shakespeare · 1616Come what come may,
Time and the hour runs through the roughest day. — William Shakespeare · 1616One lives but once in this world. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1774All 177 quotes →Historical literature156 quotes
I came, I saw, I conquered. — Julius Caesar · 46 BCHope is a waking dream. — Aristotle · 240One soul dwelling in two bodies. — AristotleHappiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous. — Pericles · 430 BCIt was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. — Charles Dickens · 1859Old to grow, but ever learning. — Solon · 119All 156 quotes →Comedy (play)137 quotes
Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever,
One foot in sea and one on shore,
To one thing constant never. — William Shakespeare · 1600Eat no onions nor garlic, for we are to utter sweet breath. — William Shakespeare · 1599Good counselors lack no clients. — William Shakespeare · 1616The whirligig of time brings in his revenges. — William Shakespeare · 1602Kindness in women, not their beauteous looks,
Shall win my love. — William Shakespeare · 1594Assassination is the extreme form of censorship. — George Bernard Shaw · 1909All 137 quotes →Epic poem98 quotes
Fortune favors the brave. — Virgil · 19 BCAbandon all hope, ye who enter here. — Dante Alighieri · 1321All men have need of the Gods. — Homer · 700 BCZeus does not bring all men's plans to fulfillment. — Homer · 700 BCAmong all men on Earth, bards have a share of honor and reverence, because the Muse has taught them songs, and loves the race of bards. — Homer · 700 BCOf all the creatures that breathe and move across the earth, there is nothing feebler than man. — Homer · 700 BCAll 98 quotes →History (play)91 quotes
See what a ready tongue suspicion hath! — William Shakespeare · 1597Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once. — William Shakespeare · 1599I am not in the roll of common men. — William Shakespeare · 1597There lives not three good men unhanged in England, and one of them is fat and grows old. — William Shakespeare · 1597There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries. — William Shakespeare · 1599Men at some time are masters of their fates.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings. — William Shakespeare · 1599All 91 quotes →Autobiography and memoir90 quotes
There are no foreign land; it is the traveller only that is foreign. — Robert Louis Stevenson · 1883There are no small steps in great affairs. — Jean-Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz · 1717We are all travellers in what John Bunyan calls the wilderness of this world....and the best that we find in our travels is an honest friend. — Robert Louis Stevenson · 1879Experience shows us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking together in the same direction. — Antoine de Saint-Exupery · 1939There is nothing in the world which does not have its decisive moment, and the masterpiece of good management is to recognize and grasp this moment. — Jean-Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz · 1717You will laugh when you learn that I thought nothing of deceiving idiots, scoundrels and fools when I needed to do so. As for my deceptions of women, these are not of the sort to be tallied, since when love has a hand in things, each party usually dupes the other. — Giacomo Casanova · 1791All 90 quotes →Scientific literature85 quotes
There is grandeur in this view of life...whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. — Charles Darwin · 1859Man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system—with all these exalted powers—Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin. — Charles Darwin · 1871I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection. — Charles Darwin · 1859Every body perseveres in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed thereon. — Isaac Newton · 1687Moreover, 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 · 1687Finally we shall place the Sun himself at the center of the Universe. All this is suggested by the systematic procession of events and the harmony of the whole Universe, if we only face the facts, as they say, "with both eyes open." — Nicolaus Copernicus · 1543All 85 quotes →Political speech80 quotes
Cui bono? — Cicero · 52 BCI have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. — Winston Churchill · 1940From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. — Winston Churchill · 1946Justice is truth in action. — Benjamin Disraeli · 1851I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. — Winston Churchill · 1939The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion. — Edmund Burke · 1784All 80 quotes →Biography60 quotes
I came, I saw, I conquered. — Julius Caesar · 46 BCOne soul dwelling in two bodies. — AristotlePatriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. — Samuel Johnson · 1778One more such victory over the Romans and we are lost. — Pyrrhus · 279 BCThe triumph of hope over experience. — Samuel Johnson · 1784The die is cast. — Julius Caesar · 49 BCAll 60 quotes →Economic literature57 quotes
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. — Adam Smith · 1776The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. — Karl Marx · 1848The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. — Karl Marx · 1848From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs! — Karl Marx · 1883The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class. — Karl Marx · 1848A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism. — Karl Marx · 1848All 57 quotes →Satire45 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 · 1759Great 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 · 1681Speak the truth and shame the Devil. — Francois Rabelais · 1564All 45 quotes →Narrative poem41 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 · 1321Love comforteth like sunshine after rain. — William Shakespeare · 1593Thence we came forth to see the stars again. — Dante Alighieri · 1321All 41 quotes →Coming of age story34 quotes
Ask no questions, and you'll be told no lies. — Charles Dickens · 1860In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt as injustice. — Charles Dickens · 1860There are a set of religious, or rather moral writers, who teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery, in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true. — Henry Fielding · 1749I loved her simply because I found her irresistible. — Charles Dickens · 1861It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home. — Charles Dickens · 1861I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. — Charles Dickens · 1861All 34 quotes →Modernist literature34 quotes
He was unheeded, happy and near to the wild heart of life. — James Joyce · 1915They lived und laughed ant loved end left. — James Joyce · 1939The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is. — Marcel Proust · 1922His heart danced upon her movements like a cork upon a tide. He heard what her eyes said to him from beneath their cowl and knew that in some dim past, whether in life or reverie, he had heard their tale before. — James Joyce · 1915The bonds between ourselves and another person exist only in our minds. Memory as it grows fainter loosens them, and notwithstanding the illusion by which we want to be duped and which, out of love, friendship, politeness, deference, duty, we dupe other people, we exist alone. Man is the creature who cannot escape from himself, who knows other people only in himself, and when he asserts the contrary, he is lying. — Marcel Proust · 1922We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full. — Marcel Proust · 1922All 34 quotes →Greek tragedy28 quotes
For he does not wish to appear the bravest, but to be the bravest. — Aeschylus · 467 BCFor God hates utterly
The bray of bragging tongues. — Sophocles · 442 BCReason is God's crowning gift to man. — Sophocles · 442 BCHow dreadful knowledge of the truth can be
When there's no help in truth! — Sophocles · 430 BCThe greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves. — Sophocles · 430 BCFor few there are among men in whom it is inborn to admire without envy a friend's good fortune. — Aeschylus · 458 BCAll 28 quotes →Travel writing28 quotes
There are no foreign land; it is the traveller only that is foreign. — Robert Louis Stevenson · 1883We are all travellers in what John Bunyan calls the wilderness of this world....and the best that we find in our travels is an honest friend. — Robert Louis Stevenson · 1879Men are never so serious, thoughtful, and intent as when they are at stool. — Jonathan Swift · 1726He 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 · 1726The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases. — William Hazlitt · 1822I 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 · 1726All 28 quotes →Tragedy26 quotes
One lives but once in this world. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1774Against stupidity the very gods
Themselves contend in vain. — Friedrich Schiller · 1801A service beyond all recompense
Weighs so heavy that it almost gives offense. — Pierre Corneille · 1674Who strives always to the utmost,
For him there is salvation. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1808What's not forbidden to do make bold. — Friedrich Schiller · 1798Boast not of what thou would'st have done, but do
What then thou would'st. — John Milton · 1671All 26 quotes →Detective fiction25 quotes
There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion. It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers. — Arthur Conan Doyle · 1893How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth? — Arthur Conan Doyle · 1890Alcohol is like love...The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl's clothes off. — Raymond Chandler · 1953It is cocaine...a seven-per-cent solution. Would you care to try it? — Arthur Conan Doyle · 1890You see, but you do not observe. — Arthur Conan Doyle · 1891It is quite a three-pipe problem, and I beg that you won't speak to me for fifty minutes. — Arthur Conan Doyle · 1891All 25 quotes →Children's literature24 quotes
Then one day there really was a wolf but when the boy shouted, they didn't believe him. — AesopHe saw clearly how plain and simple—how narrow, even—it all was; but clearly, too, how much it all meant to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in one's existence. He did not at all want to abandon the new life and its splendid spaces, to turn his back on sun and air and all they offered him and creep home and stay there; the upper world was all too strong, it called to him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to the larger stage. But it was good to think he had this to come back to, this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome. — Kenneth Grahame · 1908"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax—
Of cabbages—and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings." — Lewis Carroll · 1871Curiouser and curiouser! — Lewis Carroll · 1865Begin at the beginning...and go on till you come to the end: then stop. — Lewis Carroll · 1865"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic." — Lewis Carroll · 1871All 24 quotes →Drama (play)24 quotes
Who reflects too much will accomplish little. — Friedrich Schiller · 1804Death in itself is nothing, but we fear
To be we know not what, we know not where. — John Dryden · 1675America is God's crucible, the great melting pot where all the races of Europe are melting and reforming! — Israel Zangwill · 1908This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. — George Bernard Shaw · 1903The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. — George Bernard Shaw · 1903Popularity? It is glory's small change. — Victor Hugo · 1838All 24 quotes →Psychological literature23 quotes
We believe that civilization has been created under the pressure of the exigencies of life at the cost of satisfaction of the instincts. — Sigmund Freud · 1917The ego's relation to the id might be compared with that of a rider to his horse. The horse supplies the locomotive energy, while the rider has the privilege of deciding on the goal and of guiding and powerful animal's movement. But only too often there arises between the ego and the id the not precisely ideal situation of the rider being obliged to guide the horse along the path by which it itself wants to go. — Sigmund Freud · 1933The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind. — Sigmund Freud · 1899If a man has been his mother's undisputed darling he retains throughout life the triumphant feeling, the confidence in success, which not seldom brings actual success with it. — Sigmund Freud · 1917Nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about it. — Daniel Kahneman · 2011Religion is illusion, and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires. — Sigmund Freud · 1933All 23 quotes →Didactic poem21 quotes
Between us and excellence, the gods have placed the sweat of our brows. — Hesiod · 700 BCLife is one long struggle in the dark. — Lucretius · 55 BCAnd life is given to none freehold, but it is leasehold for all. — Lucretius · 55 BCHe harms himself who does harm to another, and the evil plan is most harmful to the planner. — Hesiod · 700 BCIf you should put even a little on a little, and should do this often, soon this too would become big. — Hesiod · 700 BCThe ring on the finger becomes thin beneath by wearing, the fall of dripping water hollows the stone. — Lucretius · 55 BCAll 21 quotes →Feminist literature20 quotes
This has always been a man's world, and none of the reasons hitherto brought forward in explanation of this fact has seemed adequate. — Simone de Beauvoir · 1949It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world. — Mary Wollstonecraft · 1792Why are women…so much more interesting to men than men are to women? — Virginia Woolf · 1929When we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy that it implies, then the "division" of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form. — Simone de Beauvoir · 1949To tell the truth, one is not born a genius: one becomes a genius. — Simone de Beauvoir · 1949I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves. — Mary Wollstonecraft · 1792All 20 quotes →Rock music20 quotes
I can't get no satisfaction,
I can't get no girl reaction. — The Rolling Stones · 1965You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes
You just might find
You get what you need. — The Rolling Stones · 1969I hope I die before I get old. — The Who · 1965We don't need no education.
We don't need no thought control.
No dark sarcasm in the classroom.
Teacher, leave them kids alone.
Hey! Teacher! Leave them kids alone! — Pink Floyd · 1979And in the end
The love you take
Is equal to the love you make. — The Beatles · 1969Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty four? — The Beatles · 1967All 20 quotes →Comedy19 quotes
There is a pleasure sure,
In being mad, which none but madmen know! — John Dryden · 1680Dead men tell no tales. — John Dryden · 1680Tale-bearers are as bad as the tale-makers. — Richard Brinsley Sheridan · 1777There is a very pretty Collection of Prints in the next Room, Madam, will you give me leave to explain them to you? — Susanna Centlivre · 1710Faint heart never won fair lady!
Nothing venture, nothing win-
Blood is thick, but water's thin-
In for a penny, in for a pound-
It's Love that makes the world go round! — W.S. Gilbert · 1882Ladies, you have to be strong and independent, and remember, don't get mad, get everything. — Ivana Trump · 1996All 19 quotes →Dystopian fiction19 quotes
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU. — George Orwell · 1949All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. — George Orwell · 1945WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH — George Orwell · 1949If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever. — George Orwell · 1949If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself. — George Orwell · 1949The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which. — George Orwell · 1945All 19 quotes →Legal writing19 quotes
The king, moreover, is not only incapable of doing wrong, but even of thinking wrong: he can never mean to do an improper thing: in him is no folly or weakness. — William Blackstone · 1765The house of everyone is to him as his castle and fortress, as well for his defence against injury and violence, as for his repose — Edward Coke · 1603The history of liberty has largely been the history of observance of procedural safeguards. — Felix Frankfurter · 1943No society, certainly not a large and heterogenous one, can fail in time to explode if it is deprived of the arts of compromise, if it knows no ways of muddling through. No good society can be unprincipled; and no viable society can be principle-ridden. — Alexander M. Bickel · 1962To establish a defence on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved that, at the time of the committing of the act, the party accused was laboring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or, if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong. — Nicholas Conyngham Tindal · 1843Justice is the constant and perpetual wish to render to every one his due. — Justinian I · 533All 19 quotes →