Quotes by Writers - Page 26

Only a weak mind seeks ultimate answers.
Agnes Thornton
To be absolutely certain about something one must know everything or nothing about it.
Olin Miller
Doubt is not a pleasant state but certainty is a ridiculous one.
Voltaire
I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned the hard way that some poems don't rhyme and some stories don't have a clear beginning middle and end. Life is about not knowing having to change taking the moment and making the best of it without knowing what's going to happen next.
Gilda Radner
We know accurately only when we know little with knowledge doubt increases.
Goethe
Some remedies are worse than the disease.
Syrus
Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.
Samuel Johnson
The crisis of today is the joke of tomorrow.
H.G.Wells
People may live as much retired from the world as they please but sooner or later before they are aware they will find themselves debtor or creditor to somebody.
Goethe
He who imagines he can do without the world deceives himself much but he who fancies the world cannot do without him is still more mistaken.
La Rochefoucauld
Our desires always increase with our possessions. The knowledge that something remains yet unenjoyed impairs our enjoyment of the good before us.
Samuel Johnson
No man who has not sat in the assemblies of men can know the light odd and uncertain ways in which decisions are often arrived at.
Sir Arthur Helps
No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently.
Agnes De Mille
No one knows what he can to do until he tries.
Publilius Syrus
Necessity relieves us from the embarrassment of choice.
Vauvenargues
Imagination took the reins and Reason slow-paced though surefooted was unequal to a race with so eccentric and flighty a companion.
Fanny Burney
Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence.
Joseph Wood Krutch
The difference between weakness and wickedness is much less than people suppose and the consequences are nearly always the same.
Lady Marguerite Blessington
Human foresight often leaves its proudest possessor only a choice of evils.
Charles Caleb Colton
Wisdom consists in being able to distinguish among dangers and make a choice of the least harmful.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Decide which is the line of conduct that presents the fewest drawbacks and then follow it out as being the best one because one never finds anything perfectly pure and unmixed or exempt from danger.
Niccolò Machiavelli
We are never deceived we deceive ourselves.
Goethe
All charming people have something to conceal usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others.
Cyril Connolly
A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumour and survival a thing not beyond the bounds of possibility.
Aldous Huxley
I am going to seek a great Perhaps.
Frangois Rabelais
Body and mind like man and wife do not always agree to die together.
Charles Caleb Colton
A solemn funeral is inconceivable to the Chinese mind.
Lin Yutang
Do 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
As men we are all equal in the presence of death.
Publilius Syrus
For three days after death hair and fingernails continue to grow but phone calls taper off.
Johnny Carson
A timid person is frightened before a danger a coward during the time and a courageous person afterwards.
Jean Paul Richter
No one reaches a high position without daring.
Syrus
Cynicism is humour in ill health.
H.G.Wells
Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.
Samuel Johnson
Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no fibs.
Oliver Goldsmith
To escape criticism - do nothing say nothing be nothing.
Elbert Hubbard
A critic is a man who knows the way but can't drive the car.
Kenneth Tynan
Faced with crisis the man of character falls back on himself.
Charles de Gaulle
Fear succeeds crime - it is its punishment.
Voltaire
A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something.
Frank Capra
Originality is nothing but judicious imitation.
Voltaire
The world embarrasses me and I cannot dream That this watch exists and has no watchmaker.
Voltaire
I can always be distracted by love but eventually I get horny for my creativity.
Gilda Radner
It is never any good dwelling on goodbyes. It is not the being together that it prolongs it is the parting.
Elizabeth Asquith Bibesco
It's a bad plan that can't be changed.
Publilius Syrus
Such is the state of life that none are happy but by the anticipation of change. The change itself is nothing. When we have made it the next wish is to change again.
Samuel Johnson
Without imagination nothing is dangerous.
Georgette Leblanc
One change always leaves the way open for the establishment of others.
Niccolò Machiavelli
The more things change the more they remain the same.
Alphonse Karr
He that has energy enough to root out a vice should go further and try to plant a virtue in its place.
Charles Caleb Colton
The consistent thinker ... is either a walking mummy or else if he has not succeeded in stifling all his vitality a fanatical monomaniac.
Aldous Huxley
Consistency is contrary to nature contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead.
Aldous Huxley
Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as for the body.
Aldous Huxley
If anyone accuses me of contradicting myself I reply: Because I have been wrong once or oftener I do not aspire to be always wrong.
Vauvenargues
None are happy but by the anticipation of change. The change itself is nothing when we have made it the next wish is to change again.
Samuel Johnson
Women and men of retiring timidity are cowardly only in dangers which affect themselves but the first to rescue when others are endangered.
Jean Paul Richter
He who fights and runs away May live to fight another day. But he who is in battle slain Can never rise to fight again.
Oliver Goldsmith
Experience shows that exceptions are as true as rules.
Edith Ronald Mirrielees
God gives us always strength enough and sense enough for everything He wants us to do.
John Ruskin
Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue that it is always respected even when it is associated with vice.
Samuel Johnson