Quotes by Writers - Page 6

Society can only exist on the basis that there is some amount of polished lying and that no one says exactly what he thinks.
Lin Yutang
Society is composed of two great classes: those who have more dinners than appetite and those who have more appetite than dinners.
Sebastien Chamfort
Laughter would be bereaved if snobbery died.
Peter Ustinov
I never sleep comfortably except when I am at sermon or when I pray to God.
François Rabelais
Sometimes gentle sometimes capricious sometimes awful never the same for two moments together almost human in its passions almost spiritual in its tenderness almost Divine in its infinity.
John Ruskin
Affected simplicity is refined imposture.
La Rochefoucauld
When thought is too weak to be simply expressed it's clear proof that it should be rejected.
Luc de Clapiers
When an idea is too weak to support a simple statement it is a sign that it should be rejected.
Vauvenargues
Simple truths are a relief from grand speculations.
Vauvenargues
True eloquence consists of saying all that should be said and that only.
François de La Rochefoucauld
The sculptor produces the beautiful statue by chipping away such parts of the marble block as are not needed- it is a process of elimination.
Elbert Hubbard
The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials.
Lin Yutang
The course of every intellectual if he pursues his journey long and unflinchingly enough ends in the obvious from which the non-intellectuals have never stirred.
Aldous Huxley
If a madman were to come into this room with a stick in his hand no doubt we should pity the state of his mind but our primary consideration would be to take care of ourselves. We should knock him down first and pity him afterwards.
Samuel Johnson
At times almost all of us envy the animals. They suffer and die but do not seem to make a "problem" of it.
Alan Watts
If we live we live if we die we die if we suffer we suffer if we are terrified we are terrified. There is no problem about it.
Alan Watts
I regret often that I have spoken never that I have been silent.
Syrus
The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished not by doing something but by refraining from doing. Great is truth but still greater from a practical point of view is silence about truth.
Aldous Huxley
Silence propagates itself and the longer talk has been suspended the more difficult it is to find anything to say.
Samuel Johnson
Silence is as full of potential wisdom and wit as the unhewn marble of great sculpture.
Aldous Huxley
How could the drops of water know themselves to be a river? Yet the river flows on.
Antoine de St. Exupery
Shadows are in reality when the sun is shining the most conspicuous thing in a landscape next to the highest lights.
John Ruskin
Sex at eighty-four is terrific especially the one in the winter.
Milton Berle
I like American women. They do things sexually Russian girls would never dream of doing - like showering.
Yakov Smirnoff
There will be sex after death we just won't be able to feel it.
Lily Tomlin
The gods help those who help themselves.
Marcus Terentius Varro
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
It is sometimes the man who opens the door who is the last to enter the room.
Elizabeth Asquith Bibesco
Somebody's boring me I think it's me.
Dylan Thomas
To be obliged to beg our daily happiness from others bespeaks a more lamentable poverty than that of him who begs his daily bread.
Charles Caleb Colton
When I have been unhappy I have heard an opera ... and it seemed the shrieking of winds when I am happy a sparrow's chirp is delicious to me. But it is not the chirp that makes me happy but I that make it sweet.
John Ruskin
Be yourself and think for yourself and while your conclusions may not be infallible they will be nearer right than the conclusions forced upon you.
Elbert Hubbard
There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving and that's your own self.
Aldous Huxley
Faced with crisis the man of character falls back on himself.
Charles de Gaulle
Do not rely completely on any other human being however dear. We meet all of life's greatest tests alone.
Agnes Macphail
Only those means of security are good are certain are lasting that depend on yourself and your own vigor.
Niccolò Machiavelli
We're all in this together ... alone.
Lily Tomlin
To be a man is precisely to be responsible.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
A man who finds no satisfaction in himself seeks for it in vain elsewhere.
François de La Rochefoucauld
Your future depends on many things but mostly on you.
Frank Tyger
The thing women have got to learn is that nobody gives you power. You just take it.
Roseanne Barr
Despair is criminal.
Samuel Johnson
The cure for grief is motion.
Elbert Hubbard
When any fit of gloominess or perversion of mind lays hold upon you make it a rule not to publish it by complaints.
Samuel Johnson
Optimism and self-pity are the positive and negative poles of modern cowardice.
Cyril Connolly
Self-love is the greatest of all flatterers.
La Rochefoucauld
To hear complaints is wearisome to the wretched and the happy alike.
Samuel Johnson
A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
I'm just a person trapped inside a woman's body.
Elayne Boosler
We bear the world and we make it.... There was never a great man who had not a great mother-it is hardly an exaggeration.
Olive Schreiner
The surest sign of fitness is success.
Olive Schreiner
Ability is sexless.
Christabel Pankhurst
Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do than what one can.
Lin Yutang
The happy man is he who knows his limitations yet bows to no false gods.
Robert W. Service
He that would be superior to external influences must first become superior to his own passions.
Samuel Johnson
A man who knows he is a fool is not a great fool.
Chuang-tzu
There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving and that's your own self.
Aldous Huxley
For fast-acting relief try slowing down.
Lily Tomlin
Who is apt on occasion to assign a multitude of reasons when one will do? This is a sure sign of weakness in argument.
Harriet Martineau
The longest absence is less perilous to love than the terrible trials of incessant proximity.
Ouida