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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Love84 quotes
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the end of Being and ideal Grace. — Elizabeth Barrett Browning · 1850My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep. The more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite. — William Shakespeare · 1597My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red...
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound. — William Shakespeare · 1609Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all. — Alfred Tennyson · 1850All you need is love. — The Beatles · 1967Love comforteth like sunshine after rain. — William Shakespeare · 1593All 84 quotes →Politics50 quotes
Democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. — Winston Churchill · 1947Where-ever Law ends, Tyranny begins. — John Locke · 1690An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry. — George Eliot · 1866Political language—and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists—is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. — George Orwell · 1946In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman. — Margaret Thatcher · 1965As long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly arise and make them miserable. — Aldous Huxley · 1937All 50 quotes →Political theory42 quotes
Where-ever Law ends, Tyranny begins. — John Locke · 1690When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary. — Thomas Paine · 1776They are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first. — Margaret Thatcher · 1987My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub. — Grover Norquist · 2001Liberty consists in doing what one desires. — John Stuart Mill · 1859A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life. — John Stuart Mill · 1859All 42 quotes →The human condition40 quotes
What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable; in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals-And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? — William Shakespeare · 1616To be born is to be wrecked on an island. — J.M. Barrie · 1913There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries. — William Shakespeare · 1599Human existence is girt round with mystery: the narrow region of our experience is a small island in the midst of a boundless sea. — John Stuart Mill · 1873Time’s the king of men.
He’s both their parent, and he is their grave,
And gives them what he will, not what they crave. — William Shakespeare · 1608Man was made for joy and woe,
And when this we rightly know
Through the world we safely go. — William Blake · 1805All 40 quotes →Men and women37 quotes
Heav'n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn'd,
Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn'd. — William Congreve · 1697I can't get no satisfaction,
I can't get no girl reaction. — The Rolling Stones · 1965It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. — Jane Austen · 1813Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever,
One foot in sea and one on shore,
To one thing constant never. — William Shakespeare · 1600Why are women…so much more interesting to men than men are to women? — Virginia Woolf · 1929Flesh of flesh,
Bone of my bone thou art, and from thy state
Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe. — John Milton · 1667All 37 quotes →Death36 quotes
Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once. — William Shakespeare · 1599Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other. — Francis Bacon · 1625But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. — John Maynard Keynes · 1924Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. — Dylan Thomas · 1951To die will be an awfully big adventure. — J.M. Barrie · 1904Death in itself is nothing, but we fear
To be we know not what, we know not where. — John Dryden · 1675All 36 quotes →Human nature35 quotes
Man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system—with all these exalted powers—Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin. — Charles Darwin · 1871How little do we know that which we are!
How less what we may be! — Lord Byron · 1824What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable; in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals-And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? — William Shakespeare · 1616The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don't turn against him; they crush those beneath them. — Emily Bronte · 1847For what a man had rather were true he more readily believes. — Francis Bacon · 1620As long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly arise and make them miserable. — Aldous Huxley · 1937All 35 quotes →Marriage35 quotes
There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded. — Diana, Princess of Wales · 1995Reader, I married him. — Charlotte Bronte · 1847Without thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and, however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want. — Jane Austen · 1813For what is wedlock forced but a hell,
An age of discord and continual strife?
Whereas the contrary bringeth bliss
And is a pattern of celestial peace. — William Shakespeare · 1592If there be no great love in the beginning, yet heaven may decrease it upon better acquaintance, when we are married and have more occasion to know one another...upon familiarity will grow more content. — William Shakespeare · 1602Marriage is the only actual bondage known to our law. There remain no legal slaves, except the mistress of every house. — John Stuart Mill · 1869All 35 quotes →Women31 quotes
Heav'n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn'd,
Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn'd. — William Congreve · 1697O fairest of Creation, last and best
Of all God's works. — John Milton · 1667Frailty, thy name is woman! — William Shakespeare · 1616Woman's at best a contradiction still. — Alexander Pope · 1735I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves. — Mary Wollstonecraft · 1792Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety. — William Shakespeare · 1607All 31 quotes →Life29 quotes
Everything that lives,
Lives not alone, nor for itself. — William Blake · 1789What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare? — W.H. Davies · 1911Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing. — William Shakespeare · 1616Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. — John Lennon · 1980For every thing that lives is Holy. — William Blake · 1794Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more. — Christopher Hitchens · 2007All 29 quotes →Progress29 quotes
If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. — Isaac Newton · 1676We cannot reform our forefathers. — George Eliot · 1859To think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration. — George Orwell · 1946The age of chivalry is past. Bores have succeeded to dragons. — Benjamin Disraeli · 1831Improvement makes straight roads, but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of Genius. — William Blake · 1793Finality, Sir, is not the language of politics. — Benjamin Disraeli · 1859All 29 quotes →War28 quotes
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori. — Wilfred Owen · 1918If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori. — Wilfred Owen · 1920For what can war, but endless war still breed? — John Milton · 1674Let me have war, say I. It exceeds peace as far as day does night. It's sprightly waking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy; mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible. — William Shakespeare · 1616War is the greatest of all agents of change. It speeds up all processes, wipes out minor distinctions, brings realities to the surface. Above all, war brings it home to the individual that he is not altogether an individual. It is only because they are aware of this that men will die on the field of battle. — George Orwell · 1941Now tell us all about the war,
And what they kill'd each other for. — Robert Southey · 1805All 28 quotes →Freedom27 quotes
A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for...is a miserable creature, who has no chance of being free. — John Stuart Mill · 1862If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. — George Orwell · 1944Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom: it is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. — William Pitt, Earl of Chatham · 1783Who would be free themselves must strike the blow? — Lord Byron · 1818Liberty consists in doing what one desires. — John Stuart Mill · 1859In all ages of the world, priests have been enemies to liberty. — David Hume · 1741All 27 quotes →Man and animals25 quotes
We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form. — William Ralph Inge · 1920A dog cannot relate his autobiography; however eloquently he may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were honest though poor. — Bertrand Russell · 1948Animals whom we have made our slaves we do not like to consider our equals. — Charles Darwin · 1838The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster. — David Hume · 1776He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge · 1798I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself. — D.H. Lawrence · 1929All 25 quotes →Truth25 quotes
How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth? — Arthur Conan Doyle · 1890Such truth as opposeth no man's profit nor pleasure is to all men welcome. — Thomas Hobbes · 1651While you live, tell truth and shame the devil! — William Shakespeare · 1597Tis strange,—but true; for truth is always strange;
Stranger than fiction. — Lord Byron · 1823Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad. — George Orwell · 1949A Truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the Lies you can invent — William Blake · 1803All 25 quotes →Law24 quotes
Where-ever Law ends, Tyranny begins. — John Locke · 1690Ignorance of the law excuses no man; not that all men know the law, but because 'tis an excuse every man will plead, and no man can tell how to confute him. — John Selden · 1689Whoever 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 · 1717Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way to the common feelings of mankind. — Edward Gibbon · 1776Men are not hanged for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen. — George Savile, Lord Halifax · 1750All presumptive evidence of felony should be admitted cautiously; for the law holds, that it is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer. — William Blackstone · 1769All 24 quotes →Nature24 quotes
No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings. — William Blake · 1793Great things are done when men and mountains meet. — William Blake · 1807There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the Lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I Love not Man the Less, but Nature more. — Lord Byron · 1818Nature to be commanded must be obeyed. — Francis Bacon · 1620Over all, rocks, wood, and water, brooded the spirit of repose, and the silent energy of nature stirred the soul to its inmost depths. — Thomas Cole · 1836Nature never makes excellent things for mean or no uses. — John Locke · 1690All 24 quotes →Time23 quotes
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day,
To-morrow will be dying. — Robert Herrick · 1648The whirligig of time brings in his revenges. — William Shakespeare · 1602Time’s the king of men.
He’s both their parent, and he is their grave,
And gives them what he will, not what they crave. — William Shakespeare · 1608All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us. — J.R.R. Tolkien · 1954Time is the great physician. — Benjamin Disraeli · 1837He that runs against Time has an antagonist not subject to casualties. — Samuel Johnson · 1781All 23 quotes →Travel22 quotes
There are no foreign land; it is the traveller only that is foreign. — Robert Louis Stevenson · 1883We are all travellers in what John Bunyan calls the wilderness of this world....and the best that we find in our travels is an honest friend. — Robert Louis Stevenson · 1879Railway termini... Are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, alas! we return. — E.M. Forster · 1910The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases. — William Hazlitt · 1822"Abroad," that large home of ruined reputations. — George Eliot · 1866So it is in travelling; a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge. — Samuel Johnson · 1776All 22 quotes →Beauty21 quotes
Beauty is vanishing from our world because we live as though it did not matter. — Roger Scruton · 2011Was ever book containing such vile matter
So fairly bound? O, that deceit should dwell
In such a gorgeous palace! — William Shakespeare · 1597Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them. — David Hume · 1758Exuberance is beauty. — William Blake · 1793Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies. — John Donne · 1631Beauty's of a fading nature,
Has a season, and is gone! — Robert Burns · 1764All 21 quotes →World War II21 quotes
I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. — Winston Churchill · 1940In war: resolution. In defeat: defiance. In victory: magnanimity. In peace: goodwill. — Winston ChurchillNever in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. — Winston Churchill · 1940This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. — Winston Churchill · 1942Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.' — Winston Churchill · 1940We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender. — Winston Churchill · 1940All 21 quotes →Books20 quotes
Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are. — John Milton · 1644Age, that Age appeared
to be best in four things: Old
Wood best to burn, Old Wine to drink, Old
Friends to trust, and old Authors to read. — Francis Bacon · 1625God be thanked for books. They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. — William Ellery Channing · 1838There is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! — Jane Austen · 1813A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good. — Samuel Johnson · 1763The true university of these days is a collection of books. — Thomas Carlyle · 1840All 20 quotes →Legal theory19 quotes
The king, moreover, is not only incapable of doing wrong, but even of thinking wrong: he can never mean to do an improper thing: in him is no folly or weakness. — William Blackstone · 1765The house of everyone is to him as his castle and fortress, as well for his defence against injury and violence, as for his repose — Edward Coke · 1603Ignorance of the law excuses no man; not that all men know the law, but because 'tis an excuse every man will plead, and no man can tell how to confute him. — John Selden · 1689A lawyer has no business with the justice or injustice of the cause which he undertakes, unless his client asks his opinion, and then he is bound to give it honestly. The justice or injustice of the cause is to be decided by the judge. — Samuel Johnson · 1773To establish a defence on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved that, at the time of the committing of the act, the party accused was laboring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or, if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong. — Nicholas Conyngham Tindal · 1843Whoever 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 · 1717All 19 quotes →Nature of love19 quotes
Love comforteth like sunshine after rain. — William Shakespeare · 1593Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair. — William Blake · 1794Pains of love be sweeter far
Than all other pleasures are. — John Dryden · 1669Man's love is of man's life a thing apart,
'Tis woman's whole existence. — Lord Byron · 1819And in the end
The love you take
Is equal to the love you make. — The Beatles · 1969Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom. — William Shakespeare · 1609All 19 quotes →The past19 quotes
Ancient times were the youth of the world. — Francis Bacon · 1605We cannot reform our forefathers. — George Eliot · 1859What's done cannot be undone. — William Shakespeare · 1616Things without all remedy
Should be without regard. What’s done is done. — William Shakespeare · 1616What can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished? The hard reality is, surely, that for the likes of you and I, there is little choice other than to leave our fate, ultimately, in the hands of those great gentlemen at the hub of this world who employ our services. What is the point in worrying oneself too much about what one could or could not have done to control the course one’s life took? Surely it is enough that the likes of you and I at least try to make our small contribution count for something true and worthy. And if some of us are prepared to sacrifice much in life in order to pursue such aspirations, surely that is in itself, whatever the outcome, cause for pride and contentment. — Kazuo Ishiguro · 1989Man is a history-making creature who can neither repeat his past nor leave it behind. — W.H. Auden · 1962All 19 quotes →Youth19 quotes
Ancient times were the youth of the world. — Francis Bacon · 1605The deepest definition of Youth is, Life as yet untouched by tragedy. — Alfred North Whitehead · 1933Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day,
To-morrow will be dying. — Robert Herrick · 1648My salad days,
When I was green in judgment. — William Shakespeare · 1607I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free. — Emily Bronte · 1847Yes, of course we were pretentious—what else is youth for? — Julian Barnes · 2011All 19 quotes →Moral theory18 quotes
All inequality that has no special utility to justify it is injustice. — Jeremy Bentham · 1795The end must justify the means. — Matthew Prior · 1700What 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 · 1941Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent. — Adam Smith · 1759Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery. — Edward Gibbon · 1781Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns. — Charlotte Bronte · 1848All 18 quotes →Wisdom18 quotes
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. — William Blake · 1793Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. — Alfred Tennyson · 1842Man was made for joy and woe,
And when this we rightly know
Through the world we safely go. — William Blake · 1805If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise. — William Blake · 1793The first and wisest of them all professed
To know this only, that he nothing knew. — John Milton · 1671Wisdom is not the purchase of a day. — Thomas Paine · 1776All 18 quotes →Aging17 quotes
I am ashes where once I was fire. — Lord Byron · 1824Well, I've been afraid of changing
'Cause I've built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Even children get older
And I'm getting older too. — Fleetwood Mac · 1975You and I are past our dancing days. — William Shakespeare · 1597And so from hour to hour we ripe and ripe,
And then from hour to hour we rot and rot,
And thereby hangs a tale. — William Shakespeare · 1616Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety. — William Shakespeare · 1607Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty four? — The Beatles · 1967All 17 quotes →Evolution17 quotes
There is grandeur in this view of life...whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. — Charles Darwin · 1859Man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system—with all these exalted powers—Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin. — Charles Darwin · 1871I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection. — Charles Darwin · 1859We thus learn that man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World. — Charles Darwin · 1871When the views advanced by me in this volume, and by Mr. Wallace, or when analogous views on the origin of species are generally admitted, we can dimly foresee that there will be a considerable revolution in natural history. — Charles Darwin · 1879Owing to this struggle for life, any variation, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any degree profitable to an individual of any species, in its infinitely complex relations to other organic beings and to external nature, will tend to the preservation of that individual, and will generally be inherited by its offspring. The offspring, also, will thus have a better chance of surviving. — Charles Darwin · 1859All 17 quotes →