Quotes by Writers - Page 28

Talent is nurtured in solitude character is formed in the stormy billows of the world.
Goethe
Every man has three characters - that which he exhibits that which he has and that which he thinks he has.
Alphonse Karr
Moderation is an ostentatious proof of our strength of character.
La Rochefoucauld
Talents are best nurtured in solitude: character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world.
Goethe
The old woman I shall become will be quite different from the woman I am now. Another I is beginning.
George Sand
There is not a single ill-doer who could not be turned to some good.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
One of the dreariest spots on life's road is the point of conviction that nothing will ever again happen to you.
Faith Baldwin
If you want things to stay as they are things will have to change.
Giuseppe di Lampedusa
The more things change the more they stay the same. (Plus ca change plus c'est la meme chose.)
Alphonse Karr
A permanent state of transition is man's most noble condition.
Juan Ramón Jiménez
If there had been a censorship of the press in Rome we should have had today neither Horace nor Juvenal nor the philosophical writings of Cicero.
Voltaire
No member of a society has a right to teach any doctrine contrary to what society holds to be true.
Samuel Johnson
It is a good thing to learn caution by the misfortunes of others.
Syrus
Providence has given us hope and sleep as a compensation for the many cares of life.
Voltaire
Benefits should be granted little by little so that they may be better enjoyed.
Niccolò Machiavelli
If we can find out why the idea rather than the nation of Canada can win a growing loyalty rather than commanding it then it seems to me we shall have come very near to trapping the elusive creature the Canadian Identity.
George Woodcock
(Canada) - the most parochial nationette on earth ... I have been living in this sanctimonious icebox ... painting portraits of the opulent Methodists of Toronto. Methodism and money in this city have produced a sort of hell of dullness.
Wyndham Lewis
There is hardly anything in the world that some man can't make a little worse and sell a little cheaper and the people who consider price only are this man's lawful prey.
John Ruskin
Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it.
Publilius Syrus
In show business the key word is honesty. Once you've learned to fake that the rest is easy.
George Burns
Committee: A group of men who keep minutes and waste hours.
Milton Berle
True bravery is shown by performing without witness what one might be capable of doing before all the world.
La Rochefoucauld
The more you say the less people remember. The fewer the words the greater the profit.
François Fénelon
We often forgive those who bore us but can't forgive those whom we bore.
François de La Rochefoucauld
Boredom ... causes us to neglect more duties than does interest.
François de La Rochefoucauld
Somebody's boring me I think it's me.
Dylan Thomas
Ennui has made more gamblers than avarice more drunkards than thirst and perhaps as many suicides as despair.
Charles Caleb Colton
Sunshine is delicious rain is refreshing wind braces us snow is exhilarating there is no such thing as bad weather only different kinds of good weather.
John Ruskin
Almost all human affairs are tedious. Everything is too long. Visits dinners concerts plays speeches pleadings essays sermons are too long. Pleasure and business labour equally under this defect or as I should rather say this fatal superabundance.
Arthur Helps
The secret of boring people lies in telling them everything.
Voltaire
A man can stand almost anything except a succession of ordinary days.
Goethe
A variety of nothing is superior to a monotony of something.
Jean Paul Richter
We often forgive those who bore us but can't forgive those whom we bore.
La Rochefoucauld
The inexorable boredom that is at the core of life.
Jacques-Binigne Bossuet
All the known world excepting only savage nations is governed by books.
Voltaire
If a book is worth reading it is worth buying.
John Ruskin
Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought.
Arthur Helps
If you would understand your own age read the works of fiction produced in it. People in disguise speak freely.
Arthur Helps
Ordinary people know little of the time and effort it takes to learn to read. I have been eighty years at it and have not reached my goal.
Goethe
My education was the liberty I had to read indiscriminately and all the time with my eyes hanging out.
Dylan Thomas
Dictionaries are like watches. The worst is better than none at all and even the best cannot be expected to run quite true.
Samuel Johnson
I hate books they teach us only to talk about what we do not know.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Everyone who knows how to read has it in their power to magnify themselves to multiply the ways in which they exist to make their life full significant and interesting.
Aldous Huxley
A lexicographer a writer of dictionaries a harmless drudge.
Samuel Johnson
Books are the most mannerly of companions accessible at all times in all moods frankly declaring the author's mind without offense.
Amos Bronson Alcott
Here we have a baby. It is composed of a bald head and a pair of lungs.
Eugene Field
I'd like to start a family but you have to have a date first.
Larry David
There are three ages of man: youth middle age and "Gee you look good."
Red Skelton
The cost of living is going up and the chance of living is going down.
Flip Wilson
I stay away from natural foods. At my age I need all the preservatives I can get.
George Burns
You know you're getting old when you stoop to tie your shoes and wonder what else you can do while you're down there.
George Burns
I can't tell you his age but when he was born the wonder drug was Mercurochrome.
Milton Berle
Love at first sight is easy to understand it's when two people have been looking at each other for a lifetime that it becomes a miracle.
Sam Levenson
The first step my son which one makes in the world is the one on which depends the rest of our days.
Voltaire
Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless peacocks and lilies for instance.
John Ruskin
There is no cosmetic for beauty like happiness.
Lady Blessington
Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless peacocks and lilies for instance.
John Ruskin
The beauty of the animal form is in exact proportion to the amount of moral and intellectual virtue expressed by it.
John Ruskin
Beautiful is greater than Good for it includes the Good.
Goethe
Ask a toad what is beauty? ... a female with two great round eyes coming out of her little head a large flat mouth a yellow belly and a brown back.
Voltaire