The Quotes canon
Sourced and curated.
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.
The human condition15 quotes
Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau · 1762So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. — F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1925There 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 · 1873We travel together, passengers on a little space ship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil; all committed for our safety to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work, and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft. We cannot maintain it half fortunate, half miserable, half confident, half despairing, half slave-to the ancient enemies of man-half free in a liberation of resources undreamed of until this day. No craft, no crew can travel safely with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the survival for us all. — Adlai Stevenson · 1965As for man, his days are like grass; As a flower of the field, so he flourishes.
For the wind passes over it, and it is gone, And its place remembers it no more. — Psalm 103:15-16 · 450 BCAll 15 quotes →Love10 quotes
Love comforteth like sunshine after rain. — William Shakespeare · 1593If music be the food of love, play on.
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken and so die. — William Shakespeare · 1602Love. Of course, love. Flames for a year, ashes for thirty. — Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa · 1957Absence is to love what wind is to fire;
It extinguishes the small, it kindles the great. — Roger de Rabutin, Comte de Bussy · 1665Now my love is thawed,
Which like a waxen image ’gainst a fire
Bears no impression of the thing it was. — William Shakespeare · 1616Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it. — Song of Solomon 8:7 · 1000 BCAll 10 quotes →Adversity7 quotes
Life always gets harder toward the summit-the cold increases, responsibility increases. — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1895I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship. — Louisa May Alcott · 1868Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything. — William Shakespeare · 1616Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift. — Mary Oliver · 2006Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm. — Publilius Syrus · 43 BCDeep unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state. — George Eliot · 1859All 7 quotes →Aging6 quotes
I am ashes where once I was fire. — Lord Byron · 1824At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide. — F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1920No spring, nor summer beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one autumnal face. — John Donne · 1631Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to. — Donald Justice · 1967We wove a web in childhood,
A web of sunny air;
We dug a spring in infancy
Of water pure and fair;
We sowed in youth a mustard seed,
We cut an almond rod;
We are now grown up to riper age —
Are they withered in the sod? — Charlotte Bronte · 1835There's an experienced rebel, Time,
And in his squadrons Poverty;
There's Age that brings along with him
A terrible artillery:
And if against all these thou keep'st thy crown,
Th'usurper Death will make thee lay it down. — Thomas Flatman · 1682Life6 quotes
Life'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 · 1616All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away. — 1st Peter 1:24 · 65And life is given to none freehold, but it is leasehold for all. — Lucretius · 55 BCShips that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing;
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another,
Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · 1873Life is an incurable disease. — Abraham Cowley · 1656Life is a flower of which love is the honey. — Victor Hugo · 1862Personal growth6 quotes
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. — Elizabeth Appell · 1979The childhood shows the man,
As morning shows the day. — John Milton · 1671Virtue shuns ease as a companion... It demands a rough and thorny path. — Michel de Montaigne · 1580All experience is an arch, to build upon. — Henry Adams · 1907Of all means to regeneration Remorse is surely the most wasteful. It cuts away healthy tissues with the poisoned. It is a knife that probes far deeper than the evil. — E.M. Forster · 1910I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving. To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it,—but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor. — Oliver Wendell Holmes · 1858Politics6 quotes
Trickle-down theory—the less than elegant metaphor that if one feeds the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows. — John Kenneth Galbraith · 1992Hope has never trickled down. It has always sprung up. — Studs Terkel · 2003There are no true friends in politics. We are all sharks circling, and waiting, for traces of blood to appear in the water. — Alan Clark · 1990In political activity, then, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea; there is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place nor appointed destination. The enterprise is to keep afloat on an even keel; the sea is both friend and enemy; and the seamanship consists in using the resources of a traditional manner of behavior in order to make a friend of every hostile occasion. — Michael Oakeshott · 1962Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed. — Mao Zedong · 1938I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions. — Lillian Hellman · 1952Progress6 quotes
That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind. — Neil Armstrong · 1969If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. — Frederick Douglass · 1857Got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight. — Bruce Cockburn · 1984Justice is love on legs, spilling over into the public sphere. — Cornel West · 2009Improvement makes straight roads, but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of Genius. — William Blake · 1793Perfection is the child of Time. — Joseph Hall · 1625Time6 quotes
Time, the devourer of all things. — Ovid · 8Time is the great physician. — Benjamin Disraeli · 1837But ever-ageing Time teaches all things. — Aeschylus · 424 BCLike as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end. — William Shakespeare · 1609Nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defense. — William Shakespeare · 1609There's an experienced rebel, Time,
And in his squadrons Poverty;
There's Age that brings along with him
A terrible artillery:
And if against all these thou keep'st thy crown,
Th'usurper Death will make thee lay it down. — Thomas Flatman · 1682Beauty4 quotes
Was ever book containing such vile matter
So fairly bound? O, that deceit should dwell
In such a gorgeous palace! — William Shakespeare · 1597No spring, nor summer beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one autumnal face. — John Donne · 1631Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1860Moisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty. — Derek Zoolander · 2001Death4 quotes
Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing;
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another,
Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · 1873All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated. — John Donne · 1624Pale death, the grand physician, cures all pain;
The dead rest well who lived for joys in vain. — John Clare · 1841There's an experienced rebel, Time,
And in his squadrons Poverty;
There's Age that brings along with him
A terrible artillery:
And if against all these thou keep'st thy crown,
Th'usurper Death will make thee lay it down. — Thomas Flatman · 1682Education4 quotes
The mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting. — PlutarchEverything has its limit—iron ore cannot be educated into gold. — Mark Twain · 1906Education is an ornament for the prosperous, a refuge for the unfortunate. — Democritus · 415 BCWhat Sculpture is to a Block of Marble, Education is to a Human Soul. — Joseph Addison · 1711Freedom4 quotes
Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau · 1762The boisterous sea of liberty indeed is never without a wave. — Thomas Jefferson · 1820The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure. — Thomas Jefferson · 1787I have to remind myself that some birds aren’t meant to be caged. — Ellis Boyd 'Red' Redding · 1994Political theory4 quotes
Every project has been found to be no better than committing the lamb to the custody of the wolf, except that one which is called a balance of power. — John Adams · 1789In political activity, then, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea; there is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place nor appointed destination. The enterprise is to keep afloat on an even keel; the sea is both friend and enemy; and the seamanship consists in using the resources of a traditional manner of behavior in order to make a friend of every hostile occasion. — Michael Oakeshott · 1962The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment. — Robert Maynard Hutchins · 1954The people turn to a benevolent rule as water flows downwards, and as wild beasts fly to the wilderness. — Mencius · 300 BCAppearance vs. reality3 quotes
Was ever book containing such vile matter
So fairly bound? O, that deceit should dwell
In such a gorgeous palace! — William Shakespeare · 1597All that glisters is not gold—
Often have you heard that told. — William Shakespeare · 1598Ornament is but the guilèd shore
To a most dangerous sea. — William Shakespeare · 1598Creativity3 quotes
Bees ransack flowers here and there, but then they make honey, which is entirely theirs: it is no longer thyme or marjoram. Similarly a boy will transform and mix his borrowings. — Michel de Montaigne · 1580Original thoughts are like shy animals. We sometimes have to look the other way - towards a busy street or terminal - before they run out of their burrows. — Alain de Botton · 2010Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen. — John Steinbeck · 1947Effects of time3 quotes
Time, the devourer of all things. — Ovid · 8Time is the great physician. — Benjamin Disraeli · 1837We wove a web in childhood,
A web of sunny air;
We dug a spring in infancy
Of water pure and fair;
We sowed in youth a mustard seed,
We cut an almond rod;
We are now grown up to riper age —
Are they withered in the sod? — Charlotte Bronte · 1835Ephemeral nature of life3 quotes
Life'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 · 1616All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away. — 1st Peter 1:24 · 65As for man, his days are like grass; As a flower of the field, so he flourishes.
For the wind passes over it, and it is gone, And its place remembers it no more. — Psalm 103:15-16 · 450 BCGoals3 quotes
If a person knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable. — Seneca · 65If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it;
Every arrow that flies feels the attraction of earth. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · 1882Who shoots at the mid-day sun, though he be sure he shall never hit the mark; yet as sure he is he shall shoot higher than who aims but at a bush. — Philip Sidney · 1593Human nature3 quotes
Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made. — Immanuel Kant · 1784Everything has its limit—iron ore cannot be educated into gold. — Mark Twain · 1906The tendency of man's nature to good is like the tendency of water to flow downwards. — Mencius · 300 BCJustice3 quotes
Justice is love on legs, spilling over into the public sphere. — Cornel West · 2009But let justice run down like water,
And righteousness like a mighty stream. — Amos 5:24 · 750 BCWe must not make a scarecrow of the law,
Setting it up to fear the birds of prey,
And let it keep one shape till custom make it
Their perch and not their terror. — William Shakespeare · 1616Law3 quotes
Laws, like houses, lean on one another. — Edmund Burke · 1760The law is not a "light" for you or any man to see by; the law is not an instrument of any kind. The law is a causeway upon which, so long as he keeps to it, a citizen may walk safely. — Robert Bolt · 1960We must not make a scarecrow of the law,
Setting it up to fear the birds of prey,
And let it keep one shape till custom make it
Their perch and not their terror. — William Shakespeare · 1616Life experience3 quotes
All experience is an arch, to build upon. — Henry Adams · 1907Experience is the best of schoolmasters, only the school fees are heavy. — Thomas Carlyle · 1828Our whole past experience is continually in our consciousness, though most of it sunk to a great depth of dimness. I think of consciousness as a bottomless lake, whose waters seem transparent, yet into which we can clearly see but a little way. — Charles Sanders Peirce · 1966Looks are deceiving3 quotes
Was ever book containing such vile matter
So fairly bound? O, that deceit should dwell
In such a gorgeous palace! — William Shakespeare · 1597All that glisters is not gold—
Often have you heard that told. — William Shakespeare · 1598Ornament is but the guilèd shore
To a most dangerous sea. — William Shakespeare · 1598Middle age3 quotes
No spring, nor summer beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one autumnal face. — John Donne · 1631The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life's morning. — Carl Jung · 1931Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to. — Donald Justice · 1967Nature of love3 quotes
Love comforteth like sunshine after rain. — William Shakespeare · 1593Absence is to love what wind is to fire;
It extinguishes the small, it kindles the great. — Roger de Rabutin, Comte de Bussy · 1665Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it. — Song of Solomon 8:7 · 1000 BCOcean and sea3 quotes
Lighter than a cork I danced on the waves. — Arthur Rimbaud · 1871The dragon-green, the luminous, the dark, the serpent-haunted sea. — James Elroy Flecker · 1915Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. — Herman Melville · 1851Poetry3 quotes
For poems are like rainbows: they escape you quickly. — Langston Hughes · 1940Poetry is certainly something more than good sense, but it must be good sense, at all events; just as a palace is more than a house, but it must be a house, at least. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge · 1834For when this song is sung and past,
My lute, be still, for I have done. — Thomas Wyatt · 1557Political progress3 quotes
If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. — Frederick Douglass · 1857Justice is love on legs, spilling over into the public sphere. — Cornel West · 2009Hope has never trickled down. It has always sprung up. — Studs Terkel · 2003Sadness3 quotes
Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift. — Mary Oliver · 2006Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · 1842Sadness is but a wall between two gardens. — Kahlil Gibran · 1926