Famous Quotes & Sayings

Charles Dickens

Be natural my children. For the writer that is natural has fulfilled all the rules of art.

Charles Dickens

To see the butcher slap the steak before he laid it on the block, and give his knife a sharpening, was to forget breakfast instantly. It was agreeable too - it really was - to see him cut it off so smooth and juicy. There was nothing savage in the act, although the knife was large and keen; it was a piece of art, high art; there was delicacy of touch, clearness of tone, skilful handling of the subject, fine shading. It was the triumph of mind over matter; quite.

Charles Caleb Colton

Eloquence is the language of nature, and cannot be learned in the schools; but rhetoric is the creature of art, which he who feels least will most excel in.

Charles Dickens

Mrs Joe was a very clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of making her clenliness more umcomfortable and unacceptable than dirt itself. Cleanliness is next to godliness, and some people do the same by their religion.

Charles Dickens

We all draw a little and compose a little, and none of us have any idea of time or money.

Charles Spurgeon

Beware, I pray thee, of presuming that thou art saved. If thy heart be renewed, if thou shalt hate the things that thou didst once love, and love the things that thou didst once hate; if thou hast really repented; if there be a thorough change of mind in thee; if thou be born again, then hast thou reason to rejoice: but if there be no vital change, no inward godliness; if there be no love to God, no prayer, no work of the Holy Spirit, then thy saying "I am saved" is but thine own assertion, and it may delude, but it will not deliver thee.

Charles Spurgeon

Alas, if our children lose the crown of life, it will be but a small consolation that they have won the laurels of literature or art.

Charles Spurgeon

Come boldly, 'O believer, for despite the whisperings of Satan and the doubtings of thine own heart, thou art greatly beloved.

Alanis Morissette

I firmly believe that the only reason why I'm on this planet, the only reason why I live, breathe, and exist is, that it's my duty to be as honest as possible in my art.

Catherine Fisher

Nothing has changed, or will change. So we must change it.

Cary Sherman

There will be no breakout. When we changed for the single, we never specified what the breakout for sales to streams were.

Ludovico Ariosto

Such fire was not by water to be drowned, nor he his nature changed by changing ground.

Eddie Irvine

The people who don't know me only see me through sound bites, and everything's changed around. Things I've said are changed to suit the magazine or newspaper concerned. The people who know me have a very different view, I would say.

Tammy Cox

We stopped at the edge of town, changed our clothes, and took the decorations off the car.

Theresa Adams

We started out in a 2-3, which wasn't a very good defense ... because they can shoot the 3, and two of them can drive to the goal. So we changed it to a 3-2 and it worked much better.

Faye White

We started off well in the second leg and got a goal, which is what we needed. We can't complain about the first part of the game but it all changed when they got a penalty,

Leos Carax

I changed my name when I was 13. I don't know why but it made sense at the time. I wanted another identity. I wanted to reinvent myself.

Lauren Worsham

My brother sings. My brother is a singer-songwriter. His name is Parker Ainsworth. He changed his last name to his middle name.

Charles Dickens

It was a good thing to have a couple of thousand people all rigid and frozen together, in the palm of one's hand.

Charles Dickens

I am a neat hand at cookery, and I'll tell you what I knocked up for my Christmas-eve dinner in the Library Cart. I knocked up a beefsteak-pudding for one, with two kidneys, a dozen oysters, and a couple of mushrooms thrown in. It's a pudding to put a man in good humour with everything, except the two bottom buttons of his waistcoat.

Charles Stross

I don't want to permanently damage myself! On the other hand, a couple of days off the keyboard tends to make things somewhat better.

Charles Stross

I'm told that a couple of my Russian translations are just plain terrible, though, and there may be others.

Alanis Morissette

Over the last couple of years, I've really worked toward balancing my life out more, having a little bit more time with friends, family and my boyfriend. There was a period of time when they were way down the list. It was all about music and touring and if everything fell by the wayside, so be it.

Alan Moore

I increasingly fear that nothing good can come of almost any adaptation, and obviously that's sweeping. There are a couple of adaptations that are perhaps as good or better than the original work. But the vast majority of them are pointless.

Alan Arkin

I played guitar. I've always considered myself an actor, but I wasn't making a living as an actor. So I was in a couple of folk groups that managed to keep me in underwear and burritos.

Alan Ball

There are times when I am directing, and there are a couple of moments I didn't get the way I wanted, but I know I still have other angles to shoot and I have to be done by noon; I move on.

Al Michaels

I still believe Emmitt has enough left in the tank to be a productive back over the next couple of seasons.

Matthias Platzeck

We want the negotiations on forming a new government to proceed quickly.

David Knopfler

I'd make a terrible practitioner of any religion in any formal setting.

Chad Harbach

The novel has always been the form that incorporates other forms. For me, it has always been the ultimate medium.

Bruno Schulz

Lifelessness is only a disguise behind which hide unknown forms of life.

Michel Onfray

We can no more tolerate neutrality and benevolence toward every conceivable form of discourse, including that of magical thinking, than we can lump together executioner and victim, good and evil.

Abhisit Vejjajiva

We are protesting a new form of dictatorship and authoritarianism.

Alex Ferguson

We're in great form at the moment and looking forward to every match.

Method Man

I'm an entertainer, so in whatever form I entertain... The thing about being a rapper is that you have more control over your form, whereas with acting you have to compromise a lot.

Nicolas Roeg

I think the big studios shaped and formed the artists that they put under contract.

Charles Dickens

I have made up my mind that I must have money, Pa. I feel that I can't beg it, borrow it, or steal it; and so I have resolved that I must marry it.

Charles Dickens

All knives and forks were working away at a rate that was quite alarming; very few words were spoken; and everybody seemed to eat his utmost, in self defence, as if a famine were expected to set in before breakfast-time to-morrow morning, and it had become high time to assert the first law of nature.

Charles Dickens

He would make a lovely corpse.

Charles Dickens

It is an old prerogative of kings to govern everything but their passions.

Charles Dickens

Although a skillful flatterer is a most delightful companion if you have him all to yourself, his taste becomes very doubtful when he takes to complimenting other people.

Charles Dickens

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!

Charles Dickens

If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.

Charles Caleb Colton

Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes better than the dinner.

Charles Caleb Colton

I'm aiming by the time I'm fifty to stop being an adolescent.

Charles Dickens

Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.

Charles Dickens

Try not to associate bodily defect with mental, my good friend, except for a solid reason

Charles Caleb Colton

Of two evils, it is perhaps less injurious to society, that good doctrine should be accompanied by a bad life, than that a good life should lend its support to a bad doctrine.

Charles Dickens

A good thing can't be cruel.

Charles Simmons

Promptitude is not only a duty, but is also a part of good manners; it is favorable to fortune, reputation, influence, and usefulness; a little attention and energy will form the habit, so as to make it easy and delightful.

Alan Moore

If you give me a typewriter and I'm having a good day, I can write a scene that will astonish its readers. That will perhaps make them laugh, perhaps make them cry - that will have some emotional clout to it. It doesn't cost much to do that.

Alan Alda

The best things said come last. People will talk for hours saying nothing much and then linger at the door with words that come with a rush from the heart.

Akira Kurosawa

A truly good movie is enjoyable too. There’s nothing complicated about it.

Brian Nicola

We want them all to go on, and realistically they all have a shot. They all want to be state-placers and they're all looking to be pretty tough. I just want them all to have a good time.

Charles Dickens

Nothingever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the onset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have a malady in the less attractive forms.

Charles Spurgeon

A religion that cannot stand a little laughter must be a very rotten one.

Alan Watts

There is no mission, nor interest to convert, and yet I believe that if this state of consciousness could become more universal, the pretentious nonsense which passes for the serious business of the world would dissolve in laughter. We should see at once that the high ideals for which we are killing and regimenting each other are empty and abstract substiutes for the unheeded miracles that surround us - not only in the obvious wonders of nature but also in the overwhelming uncanny fact of mere existence.

Alan Watts

Just as true humor is laughter at oneself, true humanity is knowledge of oneself.

Alan Watts

The point is seeing that THIS - the immediate, everyday and present experience - is IT, the entire and ultimate point for the existence of a universe. I believe that if this state of consciousness could become more universal, the pretentious nonsense which passes for the serious business of the world would dissolve in laughter...

Alan Watts

Real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter.

Alan Rickman

I do take my work seriously and the way to do that is not to take yourself too seriously.

Alan Alda

In the midst of the sense of tragedy or loss, sometimes laughter is not only healing, it's a way of experiencing the person that you've lost again.

Alan Alda

Laugh at yourself, but don't ever aim your doubt at yourself.

Pam Walker

The possibility for the process to be tainted is just too much.

Pascal Hundt

We are seeing a process of spreading poverty.

Bill Joy

Interleaf is based on the formatting process.

Bernice Johnson Reagon

Mothering/nurturing is a vital force and process establishing relationships throughout the universe.

Audre Lorde

The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot.

Bill Nighy

I don't dislike the process of animation... I find it daunting, but only as much as I find everything daunting.

Bruce Miller

We have no idea how long this process will take.

Chandler Parsons

Honestly, I was offended by the whole process,

Barbra Streisand

Performing, for me, has always been a very inner process.

Carolina Herrera

Work doesn't seem to interfere with my life. I have time for everything, even time to be alone.

John Sacchi

We're in a situation where we just can't stop the bleeding. We keep trying to put band-aids on the wound, but nothing seems to help.

Jim Rash

When you stop thinking about something, the idea comes to you. It seems to work.

Nicole Piggott

We're going to do what we've been doing all year. It seems to be working fine.

Arthur Conan Doyle

Anything seems commonplace, once explained.

Larry Mikesell

We're getting better. We just can't seem to get over the hump.

Ken Bruen

We haven't had crime writers, and for a long time in the Republic, we didn't seem to have a crime problem as such.

Todd Blackadder

Ulster seemed to get their tries effortlessly whereas we had to work for ours.

Kate Grenville

I do feel as if... Look, I think I'm a very kind of ordinary person, and it seems to me that things that are of interest to me will probably be of interest to other people. I'm not exceptional; I don't have exceptional thoughts.

Bruno Tonioli

I like to read about subjects unrelated to my work, especially history.

Barry White

Everyone to me has to pick a subject to talk about in music if you're going to be a writer.

Elizabeth Bowen

Writers do not find subjects; subjects find them.

Arthur Schopenhauer

That which knows all things and is known by none is the subject.

Annie Dillard

A writer looking for subjects inquires not after what he loves best, but after what he alone loves at all.

Saint Ignatius

The wellbeing of the head resounds throughout the whole body, and as are the Superiors, so, in turn, will their subjects be.

John Donne

I did best when I had least truth for my subjects.

Henry Morton Stanley

Everyone acquainted with the subject will recognize it as a conspicuous failure.

Frank Sinatra

I'm supposed to have a Ph.D. on the subject of women

Jason Swearingen

We started out sluggish. It took us a while to get in our groove.

Lindsey Vonn

Vail's a very important place for me. Everyone kind of took me in and accepted me in that town, and they still have to this day. I wouldn't be a downhill skier if I hadn't been there.

Nate Gallick

When we got to our feet, I wanted to make something happen, so I took a chance. It worked out for me.

Eric Norris

Unfortunately, it took us this long to do this.

Frank Haith

When they took the lead, we showed some toughness.

Trinny Woodall

I think I just took a while to know myself. I went on a journey to find out. I was a bit wild.

James E. Faust

Our Redeemer took upon Himself all the sins, pains, infirmities, and sicknesses of all who have ever lived and will ever live.

Barbara Green

She never complained about being sick. She took it all in stride.

Jalal Farzaneh

Mohammad and I took a tour of the devastation.

Randy Moore

You're going to find that it's nothing more than a tragic accident.

Helen Espy

It was an accident, a very tragic accident.

Samantha Morton

I respond very well to well-written material and women who have had an effect on society, something tragic or monumental has happened to them.

Charles Caleb Colton

It is with disease of the mind, as with those of the body; we are half dead before we understand our disorder, and half cured when we do.

Alan Moore

As I come to understand Vietnam and what it implies about the human condition, I also realize that few humans will permit themselves such an understanding.

Chinua Achebe

If you only hear one side of the story, you have no understanding at all.

David Shuster

There are a lot of folks at Fox News who bring a certain level of sophistication to their understanding of politics.

David Sedaris

This was the consequence of seeing too much and understanding the horrible truth: No one is safe. The world is not manageable.

David Sedaris

I'd always thought that I understood this, but lately I realize that what I call "understanding" is basically just fantasizing.

David Koechner

What helps you as an actor when it comes to roles is that deeper understanding of so many different fractions of humanity. Because oftentimes, even in comedy, there is conflict.

Carl Sagan

Understanding is a kind of ecstasy

Carl Sagan

The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence of the Cosmos.