The Quotes canon
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Every quote has been curated by hand and carefully authenticated.
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.
Andre Gide1 quote
The most decisive actions of our life-I mean those that our most likely to decide the whole course of our future-are more often than not, unconsidered. — Andre Gide · 1926Bernard Malamud1 quote
There comes a time in a man's life when to get where he has to go-if there are no doors or windows-he walks through a wall. — Bernard Malamud · 1973Bud Fox1 quote
Life all comes down to a few moments. This is one of them. — Bud Fox · 1987Dashiell Hammett1 quote
He felt like somebody had taken the lid off life and let him look at the works. — Dashiell Hammett · 1930Edward Gibbon1 quote
Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet. — Edward Gibbon · 1789Fay Weldon1 quote
There seems to be a general overall pattern in most lives, that nothing happens, and nothing happens, and then all of a sudden everything happens. — Fay Weldon · 2002George Eliot1 quote
Deep unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state. — George Eliot · 1859James Russell Lowell1 quote
Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side. — James Russell Lowell · 1845John Cheever1 quote
It was at the highest point in the arc of a bridge that I became aware suddenly of the depth and bitterness of my feelings about modern life, and of the profoundness of my yearning for a more vivid, simple, and peaceable world. — John Cheever · 1978Jonathan Franzen1 quote
And when the event, the big change in your life, is simply an insight—isn't that a strange thing? That absolutely nothing changes except that you see things differently and you're less fearful and less anxious and generally stronger as a result: isn't it amazing that a completely invisible thing in your head can feel realer than anything you've experienced before? You see things more clearly and you know that you're seeing them more clearly. And it comes to you that this is what it means to love life, this is all anybody who talks seriously about God is ever talking about. Moments like this. — Jonathan Franzen · 2001Pat Sr.1 quote
You gotta pay attention to the signs. When life reaches out a moment like this, it's a sin if you don't reach back. I'm telling you its a sin if you don't reach back! It'll haunt you for the rest of your days like a curse. — Pat Sr. · 2012Ryszard Kapuscinski1 quote
When is a crisis reached? When questions arise that can't be answered. — Ryszard Kapuscinski · 1985Salman Rushdie1 quote
Most of what matters in our lives takes place in our absence. — Salman Rushdie · 1981W.G. Sebald1 quote
We take almost all the decisive steps in our lives as a result of slight inner adjustments of which we are barely conscious. — W.G. Sebald · 2001William Ellery Channing1 quote
There are seasons, in human affairs, of inward and outward revolution, when new depths seem to be broken up in the soul, when new wants are unfolded in multitudes, and a new and undefined good is thirsted for. These are periods when... To dare is the highest wisdom. — William Ellery Channing · 1829