Quotes by Writers - Page 12

Freedom and constraint are two aspects of the same necessity the necessity of being the man you are and not another. You are free to be that man but not free to be another.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
The history of human growth is at the same time the history of every new idea heralding the approach of a brighter dawn and the brighter dawn has always been considered illegal outside of the law.
Emma Goldman
Don't think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire.
Samuel Johnson
To be of no Church is dangerous.
Samuel Johnson
The Ten Commandments don't tell you what you ought to do: They only put ideas into your head.
Elizabeth Bibesco
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.
H.G.Wells
My ancestors wandered lost in the wilderness for forty years because even in biblical times men would not stop to ask directions.
Elayne Boosler
Religion converts despair which destroys into resignation which submits.
Lady Blessington
Mystic: a person who is puzzled before the obvious but who understands the non-existent.
Elbert Hubbard
Zen is a way of liberation concerned not with discovering what is good or bad or advantageous but what is.
Alan Watts
Men will wrangle for religion write for it fight for it die for it anything but live for it.
Charles Caleb Colton
The idea that He would take his attention away from the universe in order to give me a bicycle with three speeds is just so unlikely I can't go along with it.
Quentin Crisp
The three great apostles of practical atheism that make converts without persecuting and retain them without preaching are Wealth Health and Power.
Charles Caleb Colton
Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe. It is not enough that a thing be possible for it to be believed.
Voltaire
I respect only those who resist me but cannot tolerate them.
Charles de Gaulle
If you have behaved badly repent make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.
Aldous Huxley
You always feel when you look it straight in the eye that you could have put more into it could have let yourself go and dug harder.
Emily Carr
It is more easy to get a favor from fortune than to keep it.
Publilius Syrus
Genius is the gold in the mine talent is the miner that works and brings it out.
Lady Marguerite Blessington
Many are destined to reason wrongly others not to reason at all: and others to persecute those who do reason.
Voltaire
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
Aldous Huxley
The field of consciousness is tiny. It accepts only one problem at a time. Get into a fist fight put your mind on the strategy of the fight and you will not feel the other fellow's punches.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
When the human mind exists in the light of reason and no more than reason we may say with absolute certainty that Man and all that made him will be in that instant gone.
Loren Eiseley
A life based on reason will always require to be balanced by an occasional bout of violent and irrational emotion for the instinctual tribes must be satisfied.
Cyril Connolly
The man who is master of his passions is Reason's slave.
Cyril Connolly
War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
The hours we pass with happy prospects in view are more pleasing than those crowned with fruition.
Oliver Goldsmith
Wisdom never kicks at the iron walls it can't bring down.
Olive Schreiner
The chief pang of most trials is not so much the actual suffering itself as our own spirit of resistance to it.
Jean Nicholas Grou
A hero is a man who does what he can.
Romain Rolland
Better is the enemy of the good.
Voltaire
A great obstacle to happiness is to expect too much happiness.
Bernard de Fontenelle
Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do than what one can do.
Lin Yutang
One must not hope to be more than one can be.
Nicolas de Chamfort
I can't write a book commensurate with Shakespeare but I can write a book by me.
Sir Walter Raleigh
Life is made up of sobs sniffles and smiles with sniffles predominating.
o.henry
Oats n.s. A grain which in England is generally given to horses but in Scotland supports the people.
Samuel Johnson
Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.
Cyril Connolly
Automatic simply means that you can't repair it yourself.
Frank Capra
A diplomat these days is nothing but a head waiter who is allowed to sit down occasionally.
Peter Ustinov
I have admired W.C. Fields since the day he advanced upon Baby LeRoy with an ice pick. Any man who hates dogs and babies can't be all bad.
Leo Rosten
Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no fibs.
Oliver Goldsmith
Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen.
Samuel Johnson
In quarreling the truth is always lost.
Syrus
It is not every question that deserves an answer.
Syrus
The punishment of criminals should be of use when a man is hanged he is good for nothing.
Voltaire
The public! the public! How many fools does it take to make up a public?
Sebastien Chamfort
The first years of man must make provision for the last.
Samuel Johnson
Prosperity makes some friends and many enemies.
Vauvenargues
An acre of performance is worth the whole world of promise.
James Howell
He who is the most slow in making a promise is the most faithful in the performance of it.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Doubt is not a pleasant condition but certainty is.
Voltaire
What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step but you have to take it.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten but they may start a winning game.
Goethe
It so happens that the world is undergoing a transformation to which no change that has yet occurred can be compared either in scope or in rapidity.
Charles de Gaulle
Every gain made by individuals or society is almost instantly taken for granted.
Aldous Huxley
Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties.
Samuel Johnson
Too bad all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair.
George Burns
Times of general calamity and confusion have ever been productive of the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace and the brightest thunderbolt is elicited from the darkest storms.
Charles Caleb Colton
The infinitely little have pride infinitely great.
Voltaire