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John Milton46 quotes
Long 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 · 1667Her 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 · 1667What in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support;
That to the height of this great Argument
I may assert Eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men. — John Milton · 1667Who overcomes
By force hath overcome but half his foe. — John Milton · 1667All 46 quotes →William Blake46 quotes
No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings. — William Blake · 1793The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. — William Blake · 1793Everything that lives,
Lives not alone, nor for itself. — William Blake · 1789Great things are done when men and mountains meet. — William Blake · 1807To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour — William Blake · 1803The cistern contains: the fountain overflows. — William Blake · 1794All 46 quotes →Francis Bacon42 quotes
All rising to great place is by a winding stair. — Francis Bacon · 1625Chiefly, the mould of a man's fortune is in his own hands. — Francis Bacon · 1625Ancient times were the youth of the world. — Francis Bacon · 1605For what a man had rather were true he more readily believes. — Francis Bacon · 1620The joys of parents are secret, and so are their griefs and fears. — Francis Bacon · 1625Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other. — Francis Bacon · 1625All 42 quotes →John Stuart Mill34 quotes
He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. — John Stuart Mill · 1859A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for...is a miserable creature, who has no chance of being free. — John Stuart Mill · 1862Human existence is girt round with mystery: the narrow region of our experience is a small island in the midst of a boundless sea. — John Stuart Mill · 1873We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still. — John Stuart Mill · 1859The fatal tendency of mankind to leave off thinking about a thing when it is no longer doubtful, is the cause of half their errors. — John Stuart Mill · 1859An opinion that corn-dealers are starvers of the poor, or that private property is robbery, ought to be unmolested when simply circulated through the press, but may justly incur punishment when delivered orally to an excited mob assembled before the house of a corn-dealer. — John Stuart Mill · 1859All 34 quotes →Alexander Pope33 quotes
Hope 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 · 1711Woman's at best a contradiction still. — Alexander Pope · 1735A 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 · 1711The hungry judges soon the sentence sign,
And wretches hang that jurymen may dine. — Alexander Pope · 1714All 33 quotes →Lord Byron33 quotes
How little do we know that which we are!
How less what we may be! — Lord Byron · 1824I am ashes where once I was fire. — Lord Byron · 1824You have deeply ventured;
But all must do so who would greatly win. — Lord Byron · 1821There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the Lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I Love not Man the Less, but Nature more. — Lord Byron · 1818Who would be free themselves must strike the blow? — Lord Byron · 1818When one subtracts from life infancy (which is vegetation),—sleep, eating, and swilling—buttoning and unbuttoning—how much remains of downright existence? The summer of a dormouse. — Lord Byron · 1813All 33 quotes →G.K. Chesterton24 quotes
Fallacies, which do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions. — G.K. Chesterton · 1930Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere. — G.K. Chesterton · 1928They say travel broadens the mind; but you must have the mind. — G.K. Chesterton · 1921Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. — G.K. Chesterton · 1908They died to save their country and they only saved the world. — G.K. Chesterton · 1922The rich are the scum of the earth in every country. — G.K. Chesterton · 1914All 24 quotes →Julian Barnes14 quotes
Yes, of course we were pretentious—what else is youth for? — Julian Barnes · 2011History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation. — Julian Barnes · 2011What you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you have witnessed. — Julian Barnes · 2011When you're young—when I was young—you want your emotions to be like the ones you read about in books. You want them to overturn your life, create and define a new reality. Later, I think, you want them to do something milder, something more practical: you want them to support your life as it is and has become. You want them to tell you that things are OK. And is there anything wrong with that? — Julian Barnes · 2011We live in time—it holds us and molds us—but I've never felt I understood it very well. And I'm not referring to theories about how it bends and doubles back, or may exist elsewhere in parallel versions. No, I mean ordinary, everyday time, which clocks and watches assure us passes regularly: tick-tock, click-clock. Is there anything more plausible than a second hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time's malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others slow it down; occasionally, it seems to go missing—until the eventual point when it really does go missing, never to return. — Julian Barnes · 2011Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn't all it's cracked up to be. — Julian Barnes · 2011All 14 quotes →John Keats13 quotes
And still they were the same bright, patient stars. — John Keats · 1820O for a Life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts! — John Keats · 1817Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings. — John Keats · 1820There is not a fiercer hell than the failure in a great object. — John Keats · 1818Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too. — John Keats · 1820Beauty is truth, truth beauty. — John Keats · 1820All 13 quotes →Sir Thomas Browne13 quotes
The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying. — Sir Thomas Browne · 1658There is no road or ready way to vertue. — Sir Thomas Browne · 1643Obstinacy in a bad cause, is but constancy in a good. — Sir Thomas Browne · 1643Time which antiquates Antiquities, and hath an art to make dust of all things. — Sir Thomas Browne · 1658Half our days we pass in the shadow of the earth; and the brother of death exacteth a third part of our lives. — Sir Thomas Browne · 1682But how shall we expect charity towards others, when we are uncharitable to our selves? — Sir Thomas Browne · 1643All 13 quotes →Jeremy Bentham12 quotes
All inequality that has no special utility to justify it is injustice. — Jeremy Bentham · 1795He rather hated the ruling few than loved the suffering many. — Jeremy Bentham · 1849It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong. — Jeremy Bentham · 1776The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation. — Jeremy Bentham · 1832Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. — Jeremy Bentham · 1789A full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? — Jeremy Bentham · 1789All 12 quotes →John Ruskin12 quotes
Taste...Is the only morality...Tell me what you like, and I'll tell you what you are. — John Ruskin · 1864To know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance. — John Ruskin · 1856Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance. — John Ruskin · 1851Be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours. — John Ruskin · 1864The essence of lying is in deception, not in words. — John Ruskin · 1860Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness. — John Ruskin · 1872All 12 quotes →T.H. Huxley12 quotes
The great end of life is not knowledge but action. — T.H. Huxley · 1877I am too much of a sceptic to deny the possibility of anything. — T.H. Huxley · 1886A man's worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes. — T.H. Huxley · 1876Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors. — T.H. Huxley · 1880For every man the world is as fresh as it was at the first day, and as full of untold novelties for him who has the eyes to see them. — T.H. Huxley · 1868It is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions. — T.H. Huxley · 1880All 12 quotes →Mary Wollstonecraft11 quotes
No man chooses evil, because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks. — Mary Wollstonecraft · 1790It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world. — Mary Wollstonecraft · 1792Virtue can only flourish amongst equals. — Mary Wollstonecraft · 1790I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves. — Mary Wollstonecraft · 1792Women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions, which men think it manly to pay to the sex, when, in fact, they are insultingly supporting their own superiority. — Mary Wollstonecraft · 1792Nothing, I am sure, calls forth the faculties so much as the being obliged to struggle with the world. — Mary Wollstonecraft · 1787All 11 quotes →Lord Chesterfield10 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 10 quotes →John Donne9 quotes
No man is an Island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. — John Donne · 1624Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies. — John Donne · 1631It comes equally to us all, and makes us all equal. — John Donne · 1621No spring, nor summer beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one autumnal face. — John Donne · 1631All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated. — John Donne · 1624Nature's great masterpiece, an elephant,
The only harmless great thing. — John Donne · 1633All 9 quotes →Ben Jonson8 quotes
Twas only fear first in the world made gods. — Ben Jonson · 1603He was not of an age but for all time! — Ben Jonson · 1623True happinesse
Consists not in the multitude of friends,
But in the worth, and choice. — Ben Jonson · 1600Suns, that set, may rise again:
But if, once, we lose this light,
'Tis with us perpetual night. — Ben Jonson · 1606I glory
More in the cunning purchase of my wealth,
Than in the glad possession. — Ben Jonson · 1606There shall be no love lost. — Ben Jonson · 1599All 8 quotes →Raymond Chandler8 quotes
Alcohol 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 · 1953There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself. — Raymond Chandler · 1953I don't mind if you don't like my manners. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings. — Raymond Chandler · 1939A big hard-boiled city with no more personality than a paper cup. — Raymond Chandler · 1949Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. — Raymond Chandler · 1944It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window. — Raymond Chandler · 1940All 8 quotes →Virginia Woolf8 quotes
Why are women…so much more interesting to men than men are to women? — Virginia Woolf · 1929There is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind. — Virginia Woolf · 1929The beauty of the world which is so soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder. — Virginia Woolf · 1929This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing room. — Virginia Woolf · 1929It is the masculine values that prevail... This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing room. — Virginia Woolf · 1929The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself. — Virginia Woolf · 1929All 8 quotes →E.M. Forster7 quotes
Railway termini... Are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, alas! we return. — E.M. Forster · 1910Of all means to regeneration Remorse is surely the most wasteful. It cuts away healthy tissues with the poisoned. It is a knife that probes far deeper than the evil. — E.M. Forster · 1910If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country. — E.M. Forster · 1938It is not that the Englishman can't feel—it is that he is afraid to feel. He has been taught at his public school that feeling is bad form. He must not express great joy or sorrow, or even open his mouth too wide when he talks—his pipe might fall out if he did. — E.M. Forster · 1920Two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism. Two cheers are quite enough: there is no occasion to give three. — E.M. Forster · 1938To trust people is a luxury in which only the wealthy can indulge; the poor cannot afford it. — E.M. Forster · 1910All 7 quotes →The Rolling Stones7 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 · 1969No sweeping exits or offstage lines
Could make me feel bitter or treat you unkind
Wild horses couldn't drag me away — The Rolling Stones · 1970Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste. — The Rolling Stones · 1968Get off of my cloud. — The Rolling Stones · 1965Mother needs something today to calm her down,
And though she's not really ill,
There's a little yellow pill
She goes running for the shelter
Of her mother's little helper
And it helps her on her way,
Gets her through her busy day. — The Rolling Stones · 1966All 7 quotes →William Blackstone7 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 · 1765Man was formed for society. — William Blackstone · 1765Whence it is that in our law the goodness of a custom depends upon its having been used time out of mind; or, in the solemnity of our legal phrase, time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. — William Blackstone · 1765All presumptive evidence of felony should be admitted cautiously; for the law holds, that it is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer. — William Blackstone · 1769That the king can do no wrong, is a necessary and fundamental principle of the English constitution. — William Blackstone · 1765The offense of riding or going armed, with dangerous or unusual weapons, is a crime against the public peace, by terrifying the good people of the land. — William Blackstone · 1769All 7 quotes →Daniel Defoe6 quotes
Vice came in always at the door of necessity, not at the door of inclination. — Daniel Defoe · 1722Actions receive their tincture from the times,
And as they change, are virtues made or crimes. — Daniel Defoe · 1703Nature has left this Tincture in the Blood,
That all Men wou'd be Tyrants if they cou'd. — Daniel Defoe · 1701Why then should women be denied the benefit of instruction? If knowledge and understanding had been useless additions to the sex, God Almighty would never have given them capacities. — Daniel Defoe · 1697Wherever God erects a house of prayer,
The Devil always builds a chapel there;
And 'twill be found upon examination,
The latter has the largest congregation. — Daniel Defoe · 1701Pleasure is a thief to business. — Daniel Defoe · 1726Robert Graves6 quotes
If there's no money in poetry, neither is there poetry in money. — Robert Graves · 1963Take your delight in momentariness,
Walk between dark and dark-a shining space
With the grave’s narrowness, though not its peace. — Robert Graves · 1929Truth-loving Persians do not dwell upon
The trivial skirmish fought near Marathon. — Robert Graves · 1946Christ of his gentleness
Thirsting and hungering,
Walked in the wilderness;
Soft words of grace He spoke
Unto lost desert-folk
That listened wondering. — Robert Graves · 1916There was no patriotism in the trenches. It was too remote a sentiment, and rejected as fit only for civilians. — Robert Graves · 1929Though philosophers like to define poetry as irrational fancy, for us it is practical, humorous, reasonable way of being ourselves. Of never acquiescing in a fraud; of never accepting the secondary-rate in poetry, painting, music, love, friends. — Robert Graves · 1969Samuel Pepys6 quotes
In appearance, at least, he being on all occasions glad to be at friendship with me, though we hate one another, and know it on both sides. — Samuel Pepys · 1668I find my wife hath something in her gizzard, that only waits an opportunity of being provoked to bring up; but I will not, for my content-sake, give it. — Samuel Pepys · 1668Strange to see how a good dinner and feasting reconciles everybody. — Samuel Pepys · 1665Musique and women I cannot but give way to, whatever my business is. — Samuel Pepys · 1666Musique is the thing of the world that I love most. — Samuel Pepys · 1666Strange to see what delight we married people have to see these poor fools decoyed into our condition. — Samuel Pepys · 1665Thomas Hood6 quotes
There's not a string attuned to mirth
But has its chord in melancholy. — Thomas Hood · 1827There is a silence where hath been no sound,
There is a silence where no sound may be,
In the cold grave-under the deep, deep sea. — Thomas Hood · 1827But evil is wrought by want of thought,
As well as want of heart! — Thomas Hood · 1844O bed! O bed! delicious bed!
That heaven upon earth to the weary head. — Thomas Hood · 1840I saw old Autumn in the misty morn
Stand shadowless like Silence, listening
To silence. — Thomas Hood · 1827Some minds improve by travel, others, rather
Resemble copper wire, or brass,
Which gets the narrower by going farther! — Thomas Hood · 1845Anthony Trollope5 quotes
It is not the prize that can make us happy; it is not even the winning of the prize....[It is] the struggle, the long hot hour of the honest fight.... There is no human bliss equal to twelve hours of work with only six hours in which to do it. — Anthony Trollope · 1862She knew how to allure by denying, and to make the gift rich by delaying it. — Anthony Trollope · 1867Never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you very much at your own reckoning. — Anthony Trollope · 1862A desire for wealth is the source of all progress. Civilization comes from what men call greed. Let your mercenary tendencies be combined with honesty and they cannot take you astray. — Anthony Trollope · 1864A man who entertains in his mind any political doctrine, except as a means of improving the condition of his fellows, I regard as a political intriguer, a charlatan, and a conjuror. — Anthony Trollope · 1883Havelock Ellis5 quotes
All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution. — Havelock Ellis · 1922Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts, because it is no mere translation or abstraction from life; it is life itself. — Havelock Ellis · 1923It is not the attainment of the goal that matters, it is the things that are met with by the way. — Havelock Ellis · 1923The sanitary and mechanical age we are now entering makes up for the mercy it grants to our sense of smell by the ferocity with which it assails our sense of hearing. — Havelock Ellis · 1914The greatest task before civilization at present is to make machines what they ought to be, the slaves, instead of the masters of men. — Havelock Ellis · 1922Thomas Gray5 quotes
The paths of glory lead but to the grave. — Thomas Gray · 1751Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learned to stray;
Along the cool sequestered vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way. — Thomas Gray · 1751Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A youth to fortune and to fame unknown.
Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy marked him for her own. — Thomas Gray · 1751What female heart can gold despise?
What cat's averse to fish? — Thomas Gray · 1748Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise. — Thomas Gray · 1747Abraham Cowley4 quotes
A mighty pain to love it is,
And 'tis a pain that pain to miss;
But of all pains the greatest pain
It is to love, but love in vain. — Abraham Cowley · 1633Life is an incurable disease. — Abraham Cowley · 1656God the first garden made, and the first city, Cain. — Abraham Cowley · 1668The world's a scene of changes, and to be Constant, in Nature were inconstancy. — Abraham Cowley · 1647