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.
William Shakespeare4 quotes
Thus sometimes hath the brightest day a cloud,
And after summer evermore succeeds
Barren winter, with his wrathful nipping cold;
So cares and joys abound, as seasons fleet. — William Shakespeare · 1594There is some soul of goodness in things evil,
Would men observingly distill it out. — William Shakespeare · 1599The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together. — William Shakespeare · 1616No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity. — William Shakespeare · 1597Carl Jung2 quotes
Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other. — Carl Jung · 1912There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word "happy" would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. — Carl Jung · 1960Heraclitus2 quotes
The opposite is beneficial; from things that differ comes the fairest attunement; all things are borne through strife. — Heraclitus · 480 BCIt is not better for men to get everything they want. Disease makes health pleasant and good, as hunger does being full, and weariness rest. — HeraclitusJohann Wolfgang von Goethe2 quotes
There is a strong shadow where there is much light. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1773Must it ever be thus-that the source of our happiness must also be the fountain of our misery? The full and ardent sentiment which animated my heart with the love of nature, overwhelming me with a torrent of delight, and which brought all paradise before me, has now become an insupportable torment, a demon which perpetually pursues and harrasses me. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1774William Blake2 quotes
Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence. — William Blake · 1793There is a smile of love,
And there is a smile of deceit,
And there is a smile of smiles
In which these two smiles meet. — William Blake · 1805Alfred Tennyson1 quote
He makes no friend who never made a foe. — Alfred Tennyson · 1859Baruch Spinoza1 quote
Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear. — Baruch Spinoza · 1677Bob Dylan1 quote
Behind every beautiful thing, there's been some kind of pain. — Bob Dylan · 1997Boethius1 quote
Who hath so entire happiness that he is not in some part offended with the condition of his estate? — Boethius · 524Charles Dickens1 quote
The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again. — Charles Dickens · 1838Colin Murray Parkes1 quote
The pain of grief is just as much a part of life as the joy of love; it is, perhaps, the price we pay for love, the cost of commitment. — Colin Murray Parkes · 1972Fred Rogers1 quote
When we love a person, we accept him or her exactly as is: the lovely with the unlovely, the strong along with the fearful, the true mixed in with the facade, and of course, the only way we can do it is by accepting ourselves that way. — Fred Rogers · 2003Henry Wadsworth Longfellow1 quote
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · 1842Herman Melville1 quote
Truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. — Herman Melville · 1851Jean Rhys1 quote
We can't all be happy, we can't all be rich, we can't all be lucky-and it would be so much less fun if we were... Some must cry so that others may be able to laugh the more heartily. — Jean Rhys · 1939Job1 quote
Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? — Job · 500 BCJonathan Safran Foer1 quote
You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness. — Jonathan Safran Foer · 2005Lao Tzu1 quote
When the people of the world all know beauty as beauty,
There arises the recognition of ugliness.
When they all know the good as good,
There arises the recognition of evil. — Lao Tzu · 400 BCMichel de Montaigne1 quote
I find that the best goodness I have has some tincture of vice. — Michel de Montaigne · 1580Pablo Picasso1 quote
Every positive value has its price in negative terms... The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima. — Pablo Picasso · 1964Percy Bysshe Shelley1 quote
We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. — Percy Bysshe Shelley · 1820Ralph Waldo Emerson1 quote
Every sweet hath its sour; every evil its good. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1841Robert Frost1 quote
Now no joy but lacks salt
That is not dashed with pain
And weariness and fault;
I crave the stain
Of tears, the aftermark
Of almost too much love,
The sweet of bitter bark
And burning clove. — Robert Frost · 1923Sean1 quote
You'll have bad times, but it'll always wake you up to the good stuff you weren't paying attention to. — Sean · 1997Thomas Hood1 quote
There's not a string attuned to mirth
But has its chord in melancholy. — Thomas Hood · 1827Virginia Woolf1 quote
The 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 · 1929