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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Oscar Wilde61 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 · 1897The curves of your lips rewrite history. — Oscar Wilde · 1891Where there is sorrow there is holy ground. — Oscar Wilde · 1897We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. — Oscar Wilde · 1892Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed. — Oscar Wilde · 1890A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world. — Oscar Wilde · 1891All 61 quotes →Edmund Burke44 quotes
A state without some means of change is without the means of its own conservation. — Edmund Burke · 1790Make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions. — Edmund Burke · 1790The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion. — Edmund Burke · 1784Parties 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 · 1775Old religious factions are volcanoes burnt out. — Edmund Burke · 1792All 44 quotes →George Bernard Shaw31 quotes
You see things; and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?" — George Bernard Shaw · 1921Assassination is the extreme form of censorship. — George Bernard Shaw · 1909The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me. — George Bernard Shaw · 1898Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it. — George Bernard Shaw · 1893The man of business…goes on Sunday to the church with the regularity of the village blacksmith, there to renounce and abjure before his God the line of conduct which he intends to pursue with all his might during the following week. — George Bernard Shaw · 1889This 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 · 1903All 31 quotes →Jonathan Swift20 quotes
Men are never so serious, thoughtful, and intent as when they are at stool. — Jonathan Swift · 1726Vision is the art of seeing things invisible. — Jonathan Swift · 1745He 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 · 1726I 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 · 1726There’s none so blind as they that won’t see. — Jonathan Swift · 1738Every man desires to live long; but no man would be old. — Jonathan Swift · 1727All 20 quotes →W.B. Yeats19 quotes
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold. — W.B. Yeats · 1920The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. — W.B. Yeats · 1920Things said or done long years ago,
Or things I did not do or say
But thought that I might say or do,
Weigh me down, and not a day
But something is recalled,
My conscience or my vanity appalled. — W.B. Yeats · 1933A pity beyond all telling
Is hid in the heart of love. — W.B. Yeats · 1893O, who could have foretold
That the heart grows old? — W.B. Yeats · 1919I have spread my dreams under your feet.
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. — W.B. Yeats · 1899All 19 quotes →James Joyce17 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 · 1939His 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 · 1915I desire to press in my arms the loveliness which has not yet come into the world. — James Joyce · 1915My body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires. — James Joyce · 1914He looked down the slope and, at the base, in the shadow of the wall of the Park, he saw some human figures lying. Those venal and furtive loves filled him with despair. He gnawed the rectitude of his life; he felt that he had been outcast from life's feast. — James Joyce · 1914All 17 quotes →Oliver Goldsmith9 quotes
I see the rural virtues leave the land. — Oliver Goldsmith · 1770How small, of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure! — Oliver Goldsmith · 1765Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law. — Oliver Goldsmith · 1764Our greatest glory is, not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. — Oliver Goldsmith · 1761Where wealth and freedom reign, contentment fails,
And honour sinks where commerce long prevails. — Oliver Goldsmith · 1764Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay;
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made:
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed, can never be supplied. — Oliver Goldsmith · 1770All 9 quotes →Samuel Beckett7 quotes
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. — Samuel Beckett · 1989You're on earth, there's no cure for that! — Samuel Beckett · 1957The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. — Samuel Beckett · 1938They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more. — Samuel Beckett · 1953Let us pray to God... The bastard! He doesn't exist! — Samuel Beckett · 1957Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness. — Samuel Beckett · 1969All 7 quotes →Richard Brinsley Sheridan6 quotes
Certainly nothing is unnatural that is not physically impossible. — Richard Brinsley Sheridan · 1779Tale-bearers are as bad as the tale-makers. — Richard Brinsley Sheridan · 1777The number of those who undergo the fatigue of judging for themselves is very small indeed. — Richard Brinsley Sheridan · 1779There is not a passion so strongly rooted in the human heart as envy. — Richard Brinsley Sheridan · 1779Never say more than is necessary. — Richard Brinsley Sheridan · 1775Be just before you're generous. — Richard Brinsley Sheridan · 1777George Berkeley3 quotes
He who says there is no such thing as an honest man, you may be sure is himself a knave. — George Berkeley · 1750All the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth-in a word, all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world-have not any subsistence without a mind... Their being is to be perceived or known. — George Berkeley · 1710What do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations? — George Berkeley · 1710Maria Edgeworth2 quotes
We cannot judge either of the feelings of the character of men with perfect accuracy, from their actions or their appearance in public; it is from their careless conversation, their half-finished sentences, that we may hope with the greatest probability of success to discover their real characters. — Maria Edgeworth · 1800What a misfortune it is to be born a woman!... Why seek for knowledge, which can prove only that our wretchedness is irremediable? If a ray of light break in upon us, it is but to make darkness more visible; to show us the narrow limits, the Gothic structure, the impenetrable barriers of our prison. — Maria Edgeworth · 1806Roger Casement2 quotes
Self-government is our right, a thing born in us at birth, a thing no more to be doled out to us, or withheld from us, by another people than the right to life itself-than the right to feel the sun, or smell the flowers, or to love our kind. — Roger Casement · 1916Where all your rights become only an accumulated wrong; where men must beg with bated breath for leave to subsist in their own land, to think their own thoughts, to sing their own songs, to garner the fruits of their own labors... Then surely it is braver, a saner and truer thing, to be a rebel in act and deed against such circumstances as these than tamely to accept it as the natural lot of men. — Roger Casement · 1917Thomas Moore2 quotes
No, there's nothing half so sweet in life
As love's young dream. — Thomas Moore · 1807Believe me, if all those endearing young charms
Which I gaze on so fondly today,
Were to change by tomorrow and fleet in my arms,
Like fairy gifts fading away,
Thou would'st still be ador'd as this moment thou art,
Let thy loveliness fade as it will,
And around the dear ruin each wish of my heart
Would entwine itself verdantly still. — Thomas Moore · 1808U22 quotes
She moves in mysterious ways. — U2 · 1991I can't believe the news today
Oh, I can't close my eyes and make it go away
How long? How long must we sing this song? — U2 · 1983William E.H. Lecky2 quotes
The Augustinian doctrine of the damnation of unbaptized infants and the Calvinistic doctrine of reprobation... Surpass in atrocity any tenets that have ever been admitted into any pagan creed. — William E.H. Lecky · 1869It had been boldly predicted by some of the early Christians that the conversion of the world would lead to the establishment of perpetual peace. In looking back, with our present experience, we are driven to the melancholy conclusion that, instead of diminishing the number of wars, ecclesiastical influence has actually and very seriously increased it. — William E.H. Lecky · 1869Brendan Behan1 quote
There's no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary. — Brendan Behan · 1965Cecil Day-Lewis1 quote
Selfhood begins with a walking away,
And love is proved in the letting go. — Cecil Day-Lewis · 1962Cecil Frances Alexander1 quote
All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all. — Cecil Frances Alexander · 1848Charles Macklin1 quote
The law is a sort of hocus-pocus science. — Charles Macklin · 1759Elizabeth Bowen1 quote
Jealousy is no more than feeling alone against smiling enemies. — Elizabeth Bowen · 1935Ernest Shackleton1 quote
Difficulties are just things to overcome after all. — Ernest Shackleton · 1908George Moore1 quote
A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it. — George Moore · 1916John Millington Synge1 quote
All art is collaboration. — John Millington Synge · 1907John O'Keeffe1 quote
You should always except the present company. — John O'Keeffe · 1793Josephine Hart1 quote
Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive. — Josephine Hart · 1991Margaret Wolfe Hungerford1 quote
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. — Margaret Wolfe Hungerford · 1878Sir Richard Steele1 quote
When you fall into a man's conversation, the first thing you should consider is, whether he has a greater inclination to hear you, or that you should hear him. — Sir Richard Steele · 1711Thomas Davis1 quote
This country of ours is no sandbank, thrown up by some recent caprice of earth. It is an ancient land, honoured in the archives of civilisation, traceable into antiquity by its piety, its valour, and its sufferings. Every great European race has sent its stream to the river of Irish mind. — Thomas Davis · 1846Thomas Parnell1 quote
My days have been so wondrous free,
The little birds that fly
With careless ease from tree to tree,
Were but bless'd as I. — Thomas Parnell · 1714