Quotes by Writers - Page 19

Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.
Samuel Johnson
Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.
Samuel Johnson
A good imitation is the most perfect originality.
Voltaire
The eyes are not responsible when the mind does the seeing.
Publilius Syrus
Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in the arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.
Samuel Johnson
A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
We must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament and embrace it with passion if we want to be happy.
Cyril Connolly
No one knows what he can do until he tries.
Publilius Syrus
Living is a form of not being sure not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong but we take leap after leap in the dark.
Agnes De Mille
The greatest wisdom often consists in ignorance.
Baltasar Gracián
To write a good love letter you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say and to finish without knowing what you have written.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I have always wanted to be somebody but I see now I should have been more specific.
Lily Tomlin
Men are always averse to enterprises in which they foresee difficulties.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Sometimes it proves the highest understanding not to understand.
Baltasar Gracián
To some people the impossible is impossible.
Elizabeth Asquith Bibesco
There is nothing more frightening than ignorance in action.
Goethe
When an idea is wanting a word can always be found to take its place.
Goethe
And here poor fool with all my lore I stand no wiser than before.
Goethe
To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.
Amos Bronson Alcott
Of all our faults the one that we excuse most easily is idleness.
La Rochefoucauld
We are lazier in our minds than in our bodies.
La Rochefoucauld
Nothing sways the stupid more than arguments they can't understand.
Cardinal de Retz
A physician can sometimes bury the scythe of death but he has no power over the sand in the hourglass.
Hester Lynch Thrale
Hypocrisy is the homage which vice renders to virtue.
La Rochefoucauld
Remember this: If you work for a man in Heaven's name work for him. If he pays you wages which supply you bread and butter work for him speak well of him stand by the institution he represents. If put to a pinch an ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness. If you must vilify condemn and eternally disparage - resign your position and when you are on the outside damn to your heart's content but as long as you are part of the institution do not condemn it.
Elbert Hubbard
Hypocrisy is the homage which vice pays to virtue.
La Rochefoucauld
Reasons are whores.
Leonard Michaels
No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures.
Samuel Johnson
He that hath the name to be an early riser may sleep till noon.
James Howell
No one is more profoundly sad than he who laughs too much.
Jean Paul Richter
Nonsense is an assertion of man's spiritual freedom in spite of all the oppressions of circumstance.
Aldous Huxley
Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.
Peter Ustinov
Comedy is tragedy - plus time.
Carol Burnett
My wife is a sex object - every time I ask for sex she objects.
Les Dawson
There are three signs of old age: loss of memory ... I forget the other two.
Red Skelton
I believe the first test of a truly great man is his humility.
John Ruskin
Our true nationality is mankind.
H.G.Wells
If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
If you treat men the way they are you never improve them. If you treat them the way you want them to be you do.
Goethe
I love my country better than my family but I love humanity better than my country.
François Fénelon
We accept every person in the world as that for which he gives himself out only he must give himself out for something. We can put up with the unpleasant more easily than we can endure the insignificant.
Goethe
Modern dancers give a sinister portent about our times. The dancers don't even look at one another. They are just a lot of isolated individuals jiggling in a kind of self-hypnosis and dancing with others only to remind themselves that we are not completely alone in this world.
Agnes De Mille
I respect only those who resist me but cannot tolerate them.
Charles de Gaulle
Hope like the gleaming taper's light adorns and cheers our way And still as darker grows the night emits a lighter ray.
Oliver Goldsmith
Hope is like a road in the country there was never a road but when many people walk on it the road comes into existence.
Lin Yutang
Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty sickness and captivity would without this comfort be insupportable.
Samuel Johnson
Patience is the art of hoping.
Vauvenargues
Hope is some extraordinary spiritual grace that God gives us to control our fears not to oust them.
Vincent NcNabb
There is nothing that fear or hope does not make men believe.
Vauvenargues
Hope is the last thing that dies in man.
François de La Rochefoucauld
Take hope from the heart of man and you make him a beast of prey.
Ouida
It is characteristic of genius to be hopeful and aspiring.
Harriet Martineau
Hope is itself a species of happiness and perhaps the chief happiness which this world affords.
Samuel Johnson
In all pleasure hope is a considerable part.
Samuel Johnson
At first we hope too much later on not enough.
Joseph Roux
Hope deceitful as it is serves at least to lead us to the end of life along an agreeable road.
La Rochefoucauld
An act of God was defined as something which no reasonable man could have expected.
A.P. Herbert
When rogues fall out honest men get into their own.
Sir Matthew Hale
To be honest one must be inconsistent.
H.G.Wells
A man should be careful never to tell tales of himself to his own disadvantage. People may be amused at the time but they will be remembered and brought out against him upon some subsequent occasion.
Samuel Johnson