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Thomas Jefferson35 quotes
A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. — Thomas Jefferson · 1787The boisterous sea of liberty indeed is never without a wave. — Thomas Jefferson · 1820The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure. — Thomas Jefferson · 1787We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a feather-bed. — Thomas Jefferson · 1790What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment, & death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment... Inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose. — Thomas Jefferson · 1786Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched... Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind... We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors. — Thomas Jefferson · 1816All 35 quotes →Seneca15 quotes
If a person knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable. — Seneca · 65The best ideas are common property. — Seneca · 65All art is but imitation of nature. — Seneca · 65A great pilot can sail even when his canvas is rent. — Seneca · 65I was shipwrecked before I got on board. — Seneca · 65It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. — Seneca · 65All 15 quotes →John Adams14 quotes
I agree with you, that in Politicks the Middle Way is none at all. — John Adams · 1776The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the Minds and Hearts of the People. — John Adams · 1818Every project has been found to be no better than committing the lamb to the custody of the wolf, except that one which is called a balance of power. — John Adams · 1789We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. — John Adams · 1798In Politicks the Middle Way is none at all. — John Adams · 1776Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide. — John Adams · 1814All 14 quotes →St. Jerome13 quotes
When the stomach is full, it is easy to talk of fasting. — St. Jerome · 395A friend is long sought, hardly found, and with difficulty kept. — St. Jerome · 374Love is not to be purchased, and affection has no price. — St. Jerome · 374No athlete is crowned but in the sweat of his brow. — St. Jerome · 374Christians are not born, but made. — St. Jerome · 403The face is the mirror of the mind, and eyes without speaking confess the secrets of the heart. — St. Jerome · 394All 13 quotes →Gustave Flaubert10 quotes
See many skies and seas. — Gustave Flaubert · 1857What is beautiful is moral, that is all there is to it. — Gustave Flaubert · 1880What a heavy oar the pen is, and what a strong current ideas are to row in. — Gustave Flaubert · 1851It is splendid to be a great writer, to put men into the frying pan of your words and make them pop like chestnuts. — Gustave Flaubert · 1851Axiom: hatred of the bourgeois is the beginning of wisdom. — Gustave Flaubert · 1867Success is a result; it must not be a goal. — Gustave Flaubert · 1876All 10 quotes →Edmund Burke9 quotes
Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist. — Edmund Burke · 1777Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other. — Edmund Burke · 1796Nothing in progression can rest on its original plan. We may as well think of rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant. — Edmund Burke · 1777It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters. — Edmund Burke · 1791The law touches us but here and there, and now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in. — Edmund Burke · 1796Manners are of more importance than laws... Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in. They give their whole form and color to our lives. — Edmund Burke · 1796All 9 quotes →Lord Chesterfield9 quotes
Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well. — Lord Chesterfield · 1746Wrongs are often forgiven, but contempt never is. Our pride remembers it for ever. — Lord Chesterfield · 1748The knowledge of the world is only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet. — Lord Chesterfield · 1746In matters of religion and matrimony I never give any advice; because I will not have anybody's torments in this world or the next laid to my charge. — Lord Chesterfield · 1765Those who travel heedlessly from place to place, observing only their distance from each other and attending only to their accommodation at the inn at night, set out fools, and will certainly return so. — Lord Chesterfield · 1747Take the tone of the company, that you are in. — Lord Chesterfield · 1747All 9 quotes →Horace8 quotes
The covetous man is ever in want. — Horace · 20 BCThe people are a many-headed beast. — Horace · 20 BCYou may drive out Nature with a pitchfork, yet she will hurry back. — Horace · 20 BCThey change their clime, not their disposition, who run across the sea. — Horace · 20 BCThe years as they pass plunder us of one thing after another. — Horace · 14 BCHe is not poor who has enough of things to use. If it is well with your belly, chest and feet, the wealth of kings can give you nothing more. — Horace · 20 BCAll 8 quotes →Mark Twain8 quotes
Cheer up—the worst is yet to come. — Mark Twain · 1894All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure. — Mark Twain · 1887Anywhere is better than Paris. Paris the cold, Paris the drizzly, Paris the rainy, Paris the Damnable. More than a hundred years ago, somebody asked Quin, "Did you ever see such a winter in all your life before?" "Yes," said he, "last summer." I judge he spent his summer in Paris. — Mark Twain · 1880Unexpected money is a delight. The same sum is a bitterness when you expected more. — Mark Twain · 1878It is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history...and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies. — Mark Twain · 1910A baby is an inestimable blessing and bother. — Mark Twain · 1876All 8 quotes →Rainer Maria Rilke8 quotes
Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky. — Rainer Maria Rilke · 1901Love your solitude and bear with sweet-sounding lamentation the suffering it causes you. — Rainer Maria Rilke · 1929Death is the side of life which is turned away from us. — Rainer Maria Rilke · 1925A work of art is good if it has grown out of necessity. — Rainer Maria Rilke · 1929A good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude. — Rainer Maria Rilke · 1901I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other. — Rainer Maria Rilke · 1902All 8 quotes →Alexander Pope7 quotes
Woman's at best a contradiction still. — Alexander Pope · 1735Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed. — Alexander Pope · 1727How often are we to die before we go quite off this stage? In every friend we lose a part of ourselves, and the best part. — Alexander Pope · 1732The ruling passion, be it what it will,
The ruling passion conquers reason still. — Alexander Pope · 1733I think it was a generous thought, and one that flowed from an exalted mind, that it was not improbable but God might be delighted with the various methods of worshipping him, which divided the whole world. — Alexander Pope · 1716Methinks God has punish'd the Avaritious as he often punishes sinners, in their own way, in the very sin itself: the thirst of gain was their crime, that thirst continued became their punishment and ruin. — Alexander Pope · 1720All 7 quotes →Martin Luther King, Jr.7 quotes
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. — Martin Luther King, Jr. · 1963One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. — Martin Luther King, Jr. · 1963I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law. — Martin Luther King, Jr. · 1963"Wait" has almost always meant "Never." — Martin Luther King, Jr. · 1963There are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. — Martin Luther King, Jr. · 1963The Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice. — Martin Luther King, Jr. · 1963All 7 quotes →Abraham Lincoln6 quotes
If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. — Abraham Lincoln · 1864Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed, is more important than any other one thing. — Abraham Lincoln · 1855My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destory slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. — Abraham Lincoln · 1862This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, cannot long retain it. — Abraham Lincoln · 1859I went into the neighborhood in that State in which I was raised, where my mother and only sister were buried, and from which I had been absent about fifteen years. That part of the country is, within itself, as unpoetical as any spot of the earth; but still, seeing it and its objects and inhabitants aroused feelings in me which were certainly poetry; though whether my expression of those feelings is poetry is quite another question. — Abraham Lincoln · 1846Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose—and you allow him to make war at pleasure. — Abraham Lincoln · 1848Voltaire6 quotes
If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. — Voltaire · 1768I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it. — Voltaire · 1767Doubt is not a pleasant condition. But certainty is an absurd one. — Voltaire · 1770When the masses get involved in reasoning, everything is lost. — Voltaire · 1766There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times. — Voltaire · 1761I am very fond of truth, but not at all of martyrdom. — Voltaire · 1776Abigail Adams5 quotes
These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed.... Great necessities call out great virtues. — Abigail Adams · 1780In the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. — Abigail Adams · 1776Patriotism in the female Sex is the most disinterested of all virtues. Excluded from honours and from offices, we cannot attach ourselves to the State or Goverment from having held a place of Eminence...Yet all History and every age exhibit Instances of patriotick virtue in the female Sex; which considering our situation equals the most Heroick of yours. — Abigail Adams · 1782Whilst you are proclaiming peace and good will to men, emancipating all nations, you insist upon retaining an absolute power over wives. But you must remember that arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken-and notwithstanding all your wise laws and maxims we have it in our power not only to be free ourselves but to subdue our masters, and without violence throw both your natural and legal authority at our feet. — Abigail Adams · 1776It is really mortifying, sir, when a woman possessed of a common share of understanding considers the difference of education between the male and female sex, even in those families where education is attended to... Nay why should your sex wish for such a disparity in those whom they one day intend for companions and associates. Pardon me, sir, if I cannot help sometimes suspecting that this neglect arises in some measure from an ungenerous jealousy of rivals near the throne. — Abigail Adams · 1778Albert Einstein5 quotes
Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth. — Albert Einstein · 1901Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving. — Albert Einstein · 1930A new idea comes suddenly and in a rather intuitive way. But intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience. — Albert Einstein · 1949The distinction between past, present and future is only an illusion, however persistent. — Albert Einstein · 1955Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard, which has been communicated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future. Certain aspects of the situation which has arisen seem to call for watchfulness and if necessary, quick action on the part of the Administration. — Albert Einstein · 1939Charles Darwin5 quotes
What a book a Devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering low, & horridly cruel works of nature! — Charles Darwin · 1856With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. — Charles Darwin · 1881To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing a new truth or fact. — Charles Darwin · 1879I cannot look at the universe as the result of blind chance, yet I can see no evidence of beneficent design, or indeed of design of any kind, in the details. — Charles Darwin · 1870I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. — Charles Darwin · 1860Vincent van Gogh5 quotes
What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything? — Vincent van Gogh · 1881I think the peasant girl is more beautiful than a lady, in her dusty, patched blue skirt and bodice, which get the most delicate hues from weather, wind, and sun. But if she puts on a lady's dress, she loses her peculiar charm. — Vincent van Gogh · 1885I cannot help it that my pictures do not sell. Nevertheless the time will come when people will see that they are worth more than the price of the paint. — Vincent van Gogh · 1888Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it. — Vincent van Gogh · 1883The best pictures, and from a technical point of view, the most complete, seen from nearby, are but patches of color next to each other, and only make and effect at a certain distance. — Vincent van Gogh · 1885John Keats4 quotes
O for a Life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts! — John Keats · 1817I cannot exist without you. I am forgetful of everything but seeing you again—my Life seems to stop there—I see no further. — John Keats · 1819I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of Imagination—What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth—whether it existed before or not. — John Keats · 1817O for a Life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts! — John Keats · 1817Lady Mary Wortley Montagu4 quotes
Men are vile inconstant toads. — Lady Mary Wortley Montagu · 1710People wish their enemies dead-but I do not; I say give them the gout, give them the stone! — Lady Mary Wortley Montagu · 1778Civility costs nothing and buys every thing. — Lady Mary Wortley Montagu · 1756No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting. — Lady Mary Wortley Montagu · 1753Benjamin Franklin3 quotes
Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency, but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes! — Benjamin Franklin · 1789All Property indeed, except the Savage’s temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents & all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity & the Uses of it. — Benjamin Franklin · 1783There never was a good War, or a bad Peace. — Benjamin Franklin · 1783Christopher Columbus3 quotes
I should be judged as a captain who went from Spain to the Indies to conquer a people numerous and warlike, whose manners and religion are very different from ours, who live in sierras and mountains, without fixed settlements, and where by divine will I have placed under the sovereignty of the King and Queen our Lords, an Other World, whereby Spain, which was reckoned poor, is become the richest of countries. — Christopher Columbus · 1500I have always read that the world, both land and water, was spherical, as the authority and researches of Ptolemy and all the others who have written this subject demonstrate and prove, as do the eclipses of the moon and other experiments that are made from east to west, and the elevation of the North Star from north to south. — Christopher Columbus · 1498And they know neither sect nor idolatry, with the exception that all believe that the source of all power and goodness is in the sky, and they believe very firmly that I, with these ships and people, came from the sky, and in this belief they everywhere received me, after they had overcome their fear. — Christopher Columbus · 1493Cicero3 quotes
What is more agreeable than one's home? — Cicero · 46 BCWhile there's life, there's hope. — Cicero · 49 BCIf you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. — Cicero · 44 BCFlannery O'Connor3 quotes
Routine is a condition of survival. — Flannery O'Connor · 1962When the grim reaper comes to get me, he'll have to give me a few extra hours to revise my last words. — Flannery O'Connor · 1959The novel is an art form and when you use it for anything other than art, you pervert it... If you do manage to use it successfully for social, religious, or other purposes, it is because you make it art first. — Flannery O'Connor · 1956Franz Kafka3 quotes
A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us. — Franz Kafka · 1904I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us... We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us. — Franz Kafka · 1904Love is to me that you are the knife which I turn within myself. — Franz Kafka · 1920George Washington3 quotes
The due administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government. — George Washington · 1789I can with truth assure you, I heard Bulletts whistle and believe me there was something charming in the sound. — George Washington · 1754Discipline is the soul of an army. It makes small numbers formidable; procures success to the weak, and esteem to all. — George Washington · 1757Henry James3 quotes
Sorrow comes in great waves—no one can know that better than you—but it rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us it leaves us on the spot, and we know that if it is strong we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain. It wears us, uses us, but we wear it and use it in return; and it is blind, whereas we after a manner see. — Henry James · 1883I shall never marry; I regard that now as an established fact, and on the whole a very respectable one; I am both happy enough and miserable enough, as it is, and don't wish to add to either side of the account. — Henry James · 1884It's a complex fate, being an American, and one of the responsibilities it entails is fighting against a superstitious valuation of Europe. — Henry James · 1872Horace Walpole3 quotes
It was easier to conquer it than to know what to do with it. — Horace Walpole · 1772This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel. — Horace Walpole · 1776One of the greatest geniuses that ever existed, Shakespeare, undoubtedly wanted taste. — Horace Walpole · 1764James Madison3 quotes
A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. — James Madison · 1822The advancement & diffusion of Knowledge, which is the only Guardian of true liberty. — James Madison · 1825I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse, and in a Republican Government a greater than in any other. — James Madison · 1790Oscar Wilde3 quotes
To recognise that the soul of a man is unknowable, is the ultimate achievement of wisdom. The final mystery is oneself. When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul? — Oscar Wilde · 1897Where there is sorrow there is holy ground. — Oscar Wilde · 1897Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. — Oscar Wilde · 1897