The Quotes canon
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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Robert Louis Stevenson24 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 · 1879Be it granted me to behold you again in dying,
Hills of home! — Robert Louis Stevenson · 1893The untented Kosmos my abode,
I pass, a willful stranger;
My mistress still the open road
And the bright eyes of danger. — Robert Louis Stevenson · 1894All human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil. — Robert Louis Stevenson · 1886Old and young, we are all on our last cruise. — Robert Louis Stevenson · 1881All 24 quotes →David Hume19 quotes
Of all the animals, with which this globe is peopled, there is none towards whom nature seems, at first sight, to have exercis'd more cruelty than towards man, in the numberless wants and necessities, with which she has loaded him, and in the slender means, which she affords to the relieving these necessities. — David Hume · 1739In contriving any system of government, and fixing the several checks and controls of the constitution, every man ought to be supposed a knave, and to have no other end, in all his actions, than private interest. — David Hume · 1741Custom, then, is the great guide of human life. — David Hume · 1748In all ages of the world, priests have been enemies to liberty. — David Hume · 1741The heart of man is made to reconcile contradictions. — David Hume · 1741Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them. — David Hume · 1739All 19 quotes →Arthur Conan Doyle15 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 · 1890It 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 · 1891It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important. — Arthur Conan Doyle · 1891All 15 quotes →Sir Walter Scott9 quotes
O, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive! — Sir Walter Scott · 1808Time will rust the sharpest sword,
Time will consume the strongest cord;
That which moulders hemp and steel,
Mortal arm and nerve must feel. — Sir Walter Scott · 1817O! many a shaft, at random sent,
Finds mark the archer little meant!
And many a word, at random spoken,
May soothe or wound a heart that's broken! — Sir Walter Scott · 1815O Woman! in our hours of ease,
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
And variable as the shade
By the light quivering upon aspen made;
When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou! — Sir Walter Scott · 1808Recollect that the Almighty, who gave the dog to be companion of our pleasures and our toils, hath invested him with a nature noble and incapable of deceit. — Sir Walter Scott · 1825And come he slow, or come he fast,
It is but Death who comes at last. — Sir Walter Scott · 1808All 9 quotes →Rebecca West3 quotes
I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute. — Rebecca West · 1913Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience. — Rebecca West · 1957Were I to... Take a peasant by the shoulders and whisper to him, "In your lifetime, have you known peace?" wait for his answer, shake his shoulders and transform him into his father, and ask him the same question, and transform him in turn into his father, I would never hear the word "yes" if I carried my questioning of the dead back for a thousand years. — Rebecca West · 1941Alan Bold1 quote
This happened near the core
Of a world's culture. This
Occurred among higher things.
This was a philosophical conclusion.
Everybody gets what he deserves. — Alan Bold · 1969Douglas Haig1 quote
Every position must be held to the last man: there must be no retirement. With our backs to the wall, and believing in the justice of our cause, each one of us must fight on to the end. — Douglas Haig · 1918Eric Geddes1 quote
The Germans, if this Government is returned, are going to pay every penny; they are going to be squeezed as a lemon is squeezed-until the pips squeak. — Eric Geddes · 1918Henry Peter Brougham1 quote
An advocate, by the sacred duty which he owes his client, knows, in the discharge of that office, but one person in the world, that client and none other. To save that client... Is the highest and most unquestioned of his duties; And he must not regard the alarm, the suffering, the torment, the destruction which he may bring upon any other. Nay... He must go on reckless of the consequences, if his fate, it should unhappily be, to involve his country in confusion for his client's protection. — Henry Peter Brougham · 1820Hugh Blair1 quote
In some men only the feeble glimmerings of Taste appear; the beauties which they relish are of the coarsest kind; and of these they have but a weak and confused impression, while in others, Taste rises to an acute discernment, and a lively enjoyment of the most refined beauties. — Hugh Blair · 1787Iain Duncan Smith1 quote
Do not underestimate the determination of a quiet man. — Iain Duncan Smith · 2002James Boswell1 quote
My definition of Man is, "a Cooking Animal." The beasts have memory, judgment, and all the faculties and passions of our mind, in a certain degree; but no beast is a cook... Man alone can dress a good dish; and every man whatever is more or less a cook, in seasoning what he himself eats. — James Boswell · 1773James Clerk Maxwell1 quote
The opinion seems to have got abroad, that, in a few years, all the great physical constants will have been approximately estimated, and that the only occupation which will be left to men of science will be to carry on these measurements to another place of decimals. — James Clerk Maxwell · 1871James Connolly1 quote
The worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave. — James Connolly · 1915James I1 quote
I will govern according to the common weal, but not according to the common will. — James I · 1621James VI and I1 quote
A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless. — James VI and I · 1604