The Quotes canon
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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Abraham Lincoln1 quote
The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. — Abraham Lincoln · 1862Arundhati Roy1 quote
Ammu said that human beings were creatures of habit, and it was amazing the kind of things they could get used to. — Arundhati Roy · 1997Bruce Lee1 quote
Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or creep or drip or crash. Be water, my friend. — Bruce Lee · 1971Christa Wolf1 quote
It is this ability to bear what is unbearable and to go on living, to go on doing what one is used to doing-it is this uncanny ability that the existence of the human species is based on. — Christa Wolf · 1996Dashiell Hammett1 quote
That's the part of it I always liked. He adjusted himself to beams falling, and then no more of them fell, and he adjusted himself to them not falling. — Dashiell Hammett · 1930Frank Herbert1 quote
There's no secret to balance. You just have to feel the waves. — Frank Herbert · 1985Fyodor Dostoevsky1 quote
Man is a creature that can get used to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him. — Fyodor Dostoevsky · 1860John Maynard Keynes1 quote
The power to become habituated to his surroundings is a marked characteristic of mankind. — John Maynard Keynes · 1919Leo Tolstoy1 quote
There are no conditions of life to which a man cannot get accustomed, especially if he sees them accepted by everyone about him. — Leo Tolstoy · 1877Marcus Aurelius1 quote
The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing, for it requires that we should stand ready and firm to meet onsets which are sudden and unexpected. — Marcus Aurelius · 180Publilius Syrus1 quote
It is a bad plan that admits of no modification. — Publilius Syrus · 43 BCSamuel Butler (novelist)1 quote
Young people have a marvellous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances. Even if they are unhappy-very unhappy-it is astonishing how easily they can be prevented from finding it out, or at any rate from attributing it to any other cause than their own sinfulness. — Samuel Butler (novelist) · 1902Seneca1 quote
A great step towards independence is a good humored stomach, one that is willing to endure rough treatment. — Seneca · 65St. Ambrose1 quote
When you are at Rome live in the Roman style: when you are elsewhere live as they live elsewhere. — St. Ambrose · 397Theognis of Megara1 quote
Adopt the character of the twisting octopus, which takes on the appearance of the nearby rock. Now follow in this direction, now turn a different hue. — Theognis of Megara · 541 BCWilliam Faulkner1 quote
Too much happens... Man performs, engenders, so much more than he can or should have to bear. That's how he finds that he can bear anything... That's what is so terrible. — William Faulkner · 1932