Quotes · Skopia

103 quotes

Please, sir, I want some more. — Charles Dickens · 1837 I wear the chain I forged in life. — Charles Dickens · 1843 It 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 · 1859 No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it for any one else. — Charles Dickens · 1865 Ask no questions, and you'll be told no lies. — Charles Dickens · 1860 Oh! but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire, secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. — Charles Dickens · 1843 All 38 quotes →

William Hazlitt14 quotes

The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases. — William Hazlitt · 1822 Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern-why then should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be? — William Hazlitt · 1822 Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is stuck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be. — William Hazlitt · 1818 A great chess-player is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he found it. No act terminating in itself constitutes greatness. — William Hazlitt · 1821 Hamlet is a name: His speeches and sayings but the idle coinage of the poet's brain. What then, are they not real? They are as real as our own thoughts. Their reality is in the reader's mind. It is we who are Hamlet. — William Hazlitt · 1817 Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food. — William Hazlitt · 1819 All 14 quotes →

W. Somerset Maugham12 quotes

It is a funny thing about life, if you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it: if you utterly decline to make do with what you can get, then somehow or other you are very likely to get what you want. — W. Somerset Maugham · 1940 There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved. — W. Somerset Maugham · 1915 It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories. — W. Somerset Maugham · 1915 The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency. — W. Somerset Maugham · 1921 People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise. — W. Somerset Maugham · 1915 Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind. — W. Somerset Maugham · 1915 All 12 quotes →

Alfred North Whitehead11 quotes

The deepest definition of Youth is, Life as yet untouched by tragedy. — Alfred North Whitehead · 1933 A culture is in its finest flower before it begins to analyze itself. — Alfred North Whitehead · 1941 What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like, and immorality is what they dislike. — Alfred North Whitehead · 1941 The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. — Alfred North Whitehead · 1928 It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle-they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments. — Alfred North Whitehead · 1911 The religious vision, and its history of persistent expansion, is our one ground for optimism. Apart from it, human life is a flash of occasional enjoyments lighting up a mass of pain and misery, a bagatelle of transient experience. — Alfred North Whitehead · 1925 All 11 quotes →

H.G. Wells5 quotes

At times I suffer from the strangest sense of detachment from myself and the world about me; I seem to watch it all from the outside, from somewhere inconceivably remote, out of time, out of space, out of the stress and tragedy of it all. — H.G. Wells · 1897 The whole human memory can be, and probably in a short time will be, made accessible to every individual. — H.G. Wells · 1937 The Social Contract is nothing more or less than a vast conspiracy of human beings to lie to and humbug themselves and one another for the general Good. Lies are the mortar that bind the savage individual man into the social masonry. — H.G. Wells · 1899 Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. — H.G. Wells · 1920 He had read Shakespeare and found him weak in chemistry. — H.G. Wells · 1894

Alan Watts4 quotes

The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless. — Alan Watts · 1982 Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone. — Alan Watts · 1957 Whether we like it or not, change comes, and the greater the resistance, the greater the pain. — Alan Watts · 1995 Zen is a liberation from time. For if we open our eyes and see clearly, it becomes obvious that there is no other time than this instant, and that the past and the future are abstractions without any concrete reality. — Alan Watts · 1957

Christopher Marlowe4 quotes

Who ever loved that loved not at first sight? — Christopher Marlowe · 1593 Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, And burnt the topless towers of Ilium? Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss! — Christopher Marlowe · 1593 I count religion but a childish toy, and hold there is no sin but ignorance. — Christopher Marlowe · 1593 Accurst be he that first invented war. — Christopher Marlowe · 1587

Aphra Behn3 quotes

Variety is the soul of pleasure. — Aphra Behn · 1681 Oh, what a dear ravishing thing is the beginning of an Amour! — Aphra Behn · 1687 Love ceases to be a Pleasure, when it ceases to be a Secret. — Aphra Behn · 1686

Henry Wotton3 quotes

Lord of himself, though not of lands; And having nothing, yet hath all. — Henry Wotton · 1651 An ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country. — Henry Wotton · 1604 In architecture as in all other operative arts, the end must direct the operation. The end is to build well. Well building hath three conditions. Commodity, firmness, and delight. — Henry Wotton · 1624

Philip Sidney3 quotes

Shallow brooks murmur most, deep silent slide away. — Philip Sidney · 1593 Who shoots at the mid-day sun, though he be sure he shall never hit the mark; yet as sure he is he shall shoot higher than who aims but at a bush. — Philip Sidney · 1593 With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies! How silently, and with how wan a face! — Philip Sidney · 1591

Benjamin Hoadly1 quote

Whoever hath an absolute authority to interpret any written, or spoken laws; it is He, who is truly the Law-giver to all intents and purposes, and not the Person who first wrote, or spoke them. — Benjamin Hoadly · 1717

Douglas Jerrold1 quote

It takes all sorts to make a world. — Douglas Jerrold · 1844

H.W. Fowler1 quote

The English speaking world may be divided into (1) those who neither know nor care what a split infinitive is; (2) those who do not know, but care very much; (3) those who know and condemn; (4) those who know and approve; (5) those who know and distinguish. Those who neither know nor care are the vast majority and are a happy folk, to be envied by the most of the minority classes. — H.W. Fowler · 1926

Tacita Dean1 quote

Learning that color is a fiction of light is one of the primary shocks of growing up: that this hitherto deeply physical thing is just a reflection and that nothing can keep its color under the cover of darkness, are monstrous things to understand, even for my adult mind. — Tacita Dean

Thomas Wyatt1 quote

For when this song is sung and past, My lute, be still, for I have done. — Thomas Wyatt · 1557

William Harvey1 quote

All we know is still infinitely less than all that still remains unknown. — William Harvey · 1628

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