Quotes by Writers - Page 25

From the errors of others a wise man corrects his own.
Publilius Syrus
Learn to see in another's calamity the ills which you should avoid.
Publilius Syrus
You don't always win your battles but it's good to know you fought.
Marjorie Holmes
He who is shipwrecked twice is foolish to blame the sea.
Publilius Syrus
A chief is a man who assumes responsibility. He does not say "My men were beaten " he says "I was beaten."
Antoine De Saint Exupery
The man who can own up to his error is greater than he who merely knows how to avoid making it.
Cardinal de Retz
He who has never failed somewhere that man cannot be great.
Herman Melville
He that has much to do will do something wrong.
Samuel Johnson
The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.
Voltaire
Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?
Voltaire
Experience is not what happens to a man. It is what a man does with what happens to him.
Aldous Huxley
Experience teaches only the teachable.
Aldous Huxley
Experience is the extract of suffering.
Arthur Helps
God will not look you over for medals degrees or diplomas but for scars!
Elbert Hubbard
Example is more efficacious than precept.
Samuel Johnson
Evil often triumphs but never conquers.
Joseph Roux
Comedy is tragedy plus time.
Carol Burnett
Experience is not what happens to you it is what you do with what happens to you.
Aldous Huxley
There are no accidents so unlucky from which clever people are not able to reap some advantage and none so lucky that the foolish are not able to turn them to their own disadvantage.
François de La Rochefoucauld
The meaning of things lies not in the things themselves but in our attitude towards them.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
Publilius Syrus
The longer we dwell on our misfortunes the greater is their power to harm us.
Voltaire
Sleep is the most blessed and blessing of all natural graces.
Aldous Huxley
Your levellers wish to level down as far as themselves but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves.
Samuel Johnson
Reason alone is insufficient to make us enthusiastic in any matter.
François de La Rochefoucauld
Let a man in a garret burn with enough intensity and he will set fire to the world.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
Man never rises to great truths without enthusiasm.
Vauvenargues
If we resist our passions it is more from their weakness than from our strength.
François de La Rochefoucauld
The passions are the only orators which always persuade.
François de La Rochefoucauld
All passions exaggerate it is because they do that they are passions.
Nicolas de Chamfort
This indeed is one of the eternal paradoxes of both life and literature-that without passion little gets done yet without control of that passion its effects are largely ill or null.
F.L. Lucas
Only passions great passions can elevate the soul to great things.
Denis Diderot
From desire I plunge to its fulfilment where I long once more for desire.
Goethe
The superfluous is very necessary.
Voltaire
Speed provides the one genuinely modern pleasure.
Aldous Huxley
If you resolve to give up smoking drinking and loving you don't actually live longer it just seems longer.
Clement Freud
The test of pleasure is the memory it leaves behind. (Die Probe Eines Genusses ist Seine Erinnerung.)
Jean Paul Richter
A tavern chair is the throne of human felicity.
Samuel Johnson
Froth at the top dregs at bottom but the middle excellent.
Voltaire
Deploring change is the unchangeable habit of all Englishmen. If you find any important figures who really like change such as Bernard Shaw Keir Hardie Lloyd George Selfridge or Disraeli you will find that they are not really English at all but Irish Scotch Welsh American or Jewish. Englishmen make changes sometimes great changes. But secretly or openly they always deplore them.
Raymond Postgate
It seems to me that you can go sauntering along for a certain period telling the English some interesting things about themselves and then all at once it feels as if you had stepped on the prongs of a rake.
Patrick Campbell
England has forty-two religions and only two sauces.
Voltaire
My prayer to God is a very short one "Oh Lord make my enemies ridiculous!" God has granted it.
Voltaire
A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.
Baltasar Gracián
The reason why lovers are never wary of one another is this - they are always talking of themselves.
La Rochefoucauld
True eloquence consists in saying all that is necessary and nothing but what is necessary.
La Rochefoucauld
To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education.
John Ruskin
There is less flogging in our great schools than formerly but then less is learned there so that what the boys get at one end they lose at the other.
Samuel Johnson
Learning to learn is to know how to navigate in a forest of facts ideas and theories a proliferation of constantly changing items of knowledge. Learning to learn is to know what to ignore but at the same time not rejecting innovation and research.
Raymond Queneau
Pedantry crams our heads with learned lumber and takes out brains to make room for it.
Charles Caleb Colton
For a man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.
Samuel Johnson
When I demanded of my friend what viands he preferred He quoth: "A large cold bottle and a small hot bird!"
Eugene Field
There are more old drunkards than old physicians.
François Rabelais
Moderation is commonly firm and firmness is commonly successful.
Samuel Johnson
Abstinence is as easy for me as temperance would be difficult.
Samuel Johnson
One of the disadvantages of wine is that is makes a man mistake words for thoughts.
Samuel Johnson
What when drunk one sees in other women one sees in Garbo sober.
Kenneth Tynan
If a woman were about to proceed to her execution she would demand a little time to perfect her toilet.
Sebastien Chamfort
In case of doubt decide in favor of what is correct.
Karl Kraus
Doubt breeds doubt.
Franz Grillparzer