Sourced and curated.

They lived und laughed ant loved end left.

The Egoist · 1915

★ 7.1

Novel · Modernist literature

Finnegans Wake · 1939

★ 7.1

A state without some means of change is without the means of its own conservation.

Reflections on the Revolution in France · 1790

★ 7.0

Parties must ever exist in a free country.

On Conciliation with America · 1775

★ 7.0

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.

1784

★ 7.0

Make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions.

Reflections on the Revolution in France · 1790

★ 7.0

Every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.

His 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.

On Conciliation with America · 1775

★ 6.9

Novel · Magazine · Modernist literature

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

The Egoist · 1915

★ 6.9

Short story

Samuel Beckett

1989

★ 6.9

Play

You see things; and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?"

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?

1921

★ 6.9

Letter

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

De Profundis · 1897

★ 6.1

Play · Comedy (play)

The curves of your lips rewrite history.

1909

★ 6.1

Novel

Men are never so serious, thoughtful, and intent as when they are at stool.

The Picture of Dorian Gray · 1891

★ 5.5

Satire · Travel writing

Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.

Gulliver's Travels · 1726

★ 5.5

Essay · Satire

Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.

Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting · 1745

★ 5.5

Novel · Magazine

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

The Picture of Dorian Gray · 1890

★ 5.5

Play · Comedic play

Where there is sorrow there is holy ground.

Lady Windermere's Fan · 1892

★ 5.5

Letter

He 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.

De Profundis · 1897

★ 5.5

Satire · Travel writing

Gulliver's Travels · 1726

★ 5.4

Old religious factions are volcanoes burnt out.

One can live for years sometimes, without living at all, and then all life comes crowding into a single hour.

Speech on the Petition of the Unitarians, May 11, 1792 · 1792

★ 5.4

Play · Tragic play

A 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.

1880

★ 5.4

Essay

My body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.

Intentions · 1891

★ 5.4

Short story

I desire to press in my arms the loveliness which has not yet come into the world.

Araby · 1914

★ 5.4

Novel · Modernist literature

We have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man · 1915

★ 5.4

Philosophical literature

Philosophical Enquiry in the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful · 1757

★ 5.3

All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.

On Conciliation with America · 1775

★ 5.3

Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine, that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field.

Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it.

Reflections on the Revolution in France · 1790

★ 5.3

The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.

1893

★ 5.3

Play · Satire

The 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.

Plays Unpleasant · 1898

★ 5.3

Things 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.

1889

★ 5.2

Poem

W.B. Yeats

1933

★ 5.2

Play · Drama (play)

This 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.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

1903

★ 5.1

Play · Drama (play)

I 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.

Man and Superman · 1903

★ 5.1

Satire · Travel writing

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

Gulliver's Travels · 1726

★ 4.5

Essay

We do not seek for truth in the abstract... Every man sees what he looks for, and hears what he listens for, and nothing else.

Intentions · 1891

★ 4.5

Letter

1891

★ 4.5

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

He 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.

1944

★ 4.4

Short story