Famous Quotes & Sayings

Charles Dickens

This reminds me, Godmother, to ask you a serious question. You are as wise as wise can be (having been brought up by the fairies), and you can tell me this: Is it better to have had a good thing and lost it, or never to have had it?

Charles Caleb Colton

A wise man may be duped as well as a fool; but the fool publishes the triumph of the deceiver.

Charles Caleb Colton

It is a common observation that any fool can get money; but they are not wise that think so.

Charles Caleb Colton

If martyrdom is now on the decline, it is not because martyrs are less zealous, but because martyr-mongers are more wise. The light of intellect has put out the fire of persecution, as other fires are observed to smoulder before the light of the same.

Charles Caleb Colton

The art of declamation has been sinking in value from the moment that speakers were foolish enough to publish, and hearers wise enough to read.

Charles Caleb Colton

Power will intoxicate the best hearts, as wine the strongest heads. No man is wise enough, nor good enough to be trusted with unlimited power.

Charles Caleb Colton

Levity is often less foolish and gravity less wise than each of them appears.

Charles Caleb Colton

He that thinks he is the happiest man, really is so. But he that thinks he is the wisest, is generally the greatest fool.

Charles Caleb Colton

We must be careful how we flatter fools too little, or wise men too much, for the flatterer must act the very reverse of the physician, and administer the strongest dose only to the weakest patient.

Charles Dickens

Ask no questions, and you'll be told no lies.

Charles Caleb Colton

Falsehood is often rocked by truth, but she soon outgrows her cradle and discards her nurse.

Charles Caleb Colton

Pride is less ashamed of being ignorant, than of being instructed, and she looks too high to find that, which very often lies beneath her.

Charles Caleb Colton

Ignorance lies at the bottom of all human knowledge, and the deeper we penetrate the nearer we arrive unto it. For what do we truly know, or what can we clearly affirm, of any one of those important things upon which all our reasonings must of necessity be built--time and space, life and death, matter and mind?

Charles Caleb Colton

Men of great and shining qualities do not always succeed in life, but the fault lies more often in themselves than in others.

Charles Dickens

The persons on whom I have bestowed my dearest love lie deep in their graves; but, although the happiness and delight of my life lie buried there too, I have not made a coffin of my heart, and sealed it up for ever on my best affections. Deep affliction has only made them stronger; it ought, I think, for it should refine our nature.

Charles Dickens

I mean a man whose hopes and aims may sometimes lie (as most men's sometimes do, I dare say) above the ordinary level, but to whom the ordinary level will be high enough after all if it should prove to be a way of usefulness and good service leading to no other. All generous spirits are ambitious, I suppose, but the ambition that calmly trusts itself to such a road, instead of spasmodically trying to fly over it, is of the kind I care for.

Charles Dickens

The boy was lying, fast asleep, on a rude bed upon the floor; so pale with anxiety, and sadness, and the closeness of his prison, that he looked like death; not death as it shews in shroud and coffin, but in the guise it wears when life has just departed; when a young and gentle spirit has, but an instant, fled to Heaven: and the gross air of the world has not had time to breathe upon the changing dust it hallowed.

Charles Dickens

Can I view thee panting, lying On thy stomach, without sighing; Can I unmoved see thee dying On a log Expiring frog!

Charles Caleb Colton

There are some frauds so well conducted that it would be stupidity not to be deceived by them.

Alan Watts

If you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you'll spend your life completely wasting your time. You'll be doing things you don't like doing in order to go on living, that is to go on doing thing you don't like doing, which is stupid.

Alan Price

I think it's like everything else; one shouldn't dig too deeply. It's silly to say that with a journalist, but sometimes there is not a truth to be found.

Alan Moore

With so much chaos, someone will do something stupid. And when they do, things will turn nasty

Alan Moore

I thought as much. Miss Murray, though I am a beast, do not think that I am stupid. I know that I am hideous and hateful. I am not loved, nor ever hope to be. Nor am I fool enough to think that what I feel for you is love. But in this world, alone, I do not hate you. And alone in this world, you do not hate me.

Alan Bradley

One of the marks of a truly great mind, I had discovered, is the ability to feign stupidity on demand.

Alain Prost

I think maybe the English don't want to try something and look stupid, because they are a bit reserved.

Chris Colfer

I'm allergic to stupidity.

Chris Christie

Maybe because I'm from New Jersey, I just have this kind of plain language hangup. But I would make very clear - I would not talk to Vladimir Putin. In fact, I would talk to Vladimir Putin a lot. But I'd say to him, "Listen, Mr. President, there's a no-fly zone in Syria; you fly in, it applies to you." And yes, we would shoot down the planes of Russian pilots if in fact they were stupid enough to think that this president was the same feckless weakling that the president we have in the Oval Office is right now.