Famous Quotes & Sayings

Alan Hovhaness

This is not to say that the Scots are not fine people, but they were all sort of... well, my grandfather was a minister and sort of Protestant, and this was rather depressing to me.

Akhenaton

Scorn also to depress thy competitor by any dishonest or unworthy method; strive to raise thyself above him only by excelling him; so shall thy contest for superiority be crowned with honour, if not with success.

David Sedaris

It can take years. With the first draft, I just write everything. With the second draft, it becomes so depressing for me, because I realize that I was fooled into thinking I'd written the story. I hadn't-I had just typed for a long time. So then I have to carve out a story from the 25 or so pages. It's in there somewhere-but I have to find it. I'll then write a third, fourth, and fifth draft, and so on.

Dave Barry

What may seem depressing or even tragic to one person may seem like an absolute scream to another person, especially if he has had between four and seven beers.

Dave Barry

The United States tried, by depressing the clutch of diplomacy and downshifting the gearshift lever of rhetoric, to remain neutral, but it became increasingly obvious that the nation was going to get into a war, especially since it was almost 1812.

Dave Barry

You should never pick up a newspaper when you're feeling good, because every newspaper has a special department, called the Bummer Desk, which is responsible for digging up depressing front-page stories.

David R. Brower

Have fun saving the world, or you are just going to depress yourself.

Byron Katie

Mind is infinitely creative. And when it's not stuck, that's where the joy comes from. Something happens, and the way we think about it, understand it, see it, is actually hilarious, whereas before it used to depress us.

Caitlin Moran

What art should be about,' they will say, 'is revealing exquisite and resonant truths about the human condition.' Well, to be honest - no, it shouldn’t. I mean, it can occasionally, if it wants to; but really, how many penetrating insights to human nature do you need in one lifetime? Two? Three? Once you’ve realised that no one else has a clue what they’re doing, either, and that love can be totally pointless, any further insights into human nature just start getting depressing really.

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 Dickens

Make them laugh, make them cry, make them wait.

Charles Spurgeon

My soul, never laugh at sin's fooleries, lest thou come to smile at sin itself. It is thine enemy, and thy Lord's enemy.

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.

Charles Dickens

I don't remember who was there, except Dora. I have not the least idea what we had for dinner, besides Dora. My impression is, that I dined off Dora, entirely, and sent away half-a-dozen plates untouched. I sat next to her. I talked to her. She had the most delightful little voice, the gayest little laugh, the pleasantest and most fascinating little ways, that ever led a lost youth into hopeless slavery. She was rather diminutive altogether. So much the more precious, I thought.

Charles Dickens

There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.

Charles Dickens

Never close your lips to those whom you have already opened your heart.

Charles Dickens

Mystery and disappointment are not absolutely indispensable to the growth of love, but they are, very often, its powerful auxiliaries.

Charles Dickens

To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart.

Charles Dickens

You know what I am going to say. I love you. What other men may mean when they use that expression, I cannot tell. What I mean is that I am under the influence of some tremendous attraction which I have resisted in vain, and which overmasters me. You could draw me to fire, you could draw me to water, you could draw me to the gallows, you could draw me to any death, you could draw me to anything I have most avoided, you could draw me to any exposure and disgrace. This and the confusion of my thoughts, so that I am fit for nothing, is what I mean by your being the ruin of me.

Charles Dickens

What lawsuits grow out of the graves of rich men, every day; sowing perjury, hatred, and lies among near kindred, where there should be nothing but love!

Charles Dickens

I loved you madly; in the distasteful work of the day, in the wakeful misery of the night, girded by sordid realities, or wandering through Paradises and Hells of visions into which I rushed, carrying your image in my arms, I loved you madly.

Charles Dickens

I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.

Charles Dickens

Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own.

Charles Caleb Colton

We cannot think too highly of our nature, nor too humbly of ourselves.

Charles Dickens

If Natur has gifted a man with powers of argeyment, a man has a right to make the best of 'em, and has not a right to stand on false delicacy, and deny that he is so gifted; for that is a turning of his back on Natur, a flouting of her, a slighting of her precious caskets, and a proving of one's self to be a swine that isn't worth her scattering pearls before.

Charles Dickens

When the moon shines very brilliantly, a solitude and stillness seem to proceed from her that influence even crowded places full of life.

Charles Dickens

The earth covered with a sable pall as for the burial of yesterday; the clumps of dark trees, its giant plumes of funeral feathers, waving sadly to and fro: all hushed, all noiseless, and in deep repose, save the swift clouds that skim across the moon, and the cautious wind, as, creeping after them upon the ground, it stops to listen, and goes rustling on, and stops again, and follows, like a savage on the trail.

Charles Dickens

A moment, and its glory was no more. The sun went down beneath the long dark lines of hill and cloud which piled up in the west an airy city, wall heaped on wall, and battlement on battlement; the light was all withdrawn; the shining church turned cold and dark; the stream forgot to smile; the birds were silent; and the gloom of winter dwelt on everything.

Charles Dickens

It was a cold hard easterly morning when he latched the garden gate and turned away. The light snowfall which had feathered his schoolroom windows on the Thursday, still lingered in the air, and was falling white, while the wind blew black.

Charles Dickens

The white face of the winter day came sluggishly on, veiled in a frosty mist; and the shadowy ships in the river slowly changed to black substances; and the sun, blood-red on the eastern marshes behind dark masts and yards, seemed filled with the ruins of a forest it had set on fire.

Charles Dickens

Not only is the day waning, but the year. The low sun is fiery and yet cold behind the monastery ruin, and the Virginia creeper on the Cathedral wall has showered half its deep-red leaves down on the pavement. There has been rain this afternoon, and a wintry shudder goes among the little pools on the cracked, uneven flag-stones, and through the giant elm-trees as they shed a gust of tears.

Neil Fallon

We want to thank (the service members) the only way we know how that's by playing rock 'n' roll.

Chord Overstreet

Ive been playing music since I was born.

Jenic Tumaneng

We stuck with them. We'll keep playing and keep working at it.

Lucas Black

When I'm not acting, I'm playing golf. I'm pretty passionate about it.

Nigel Kennedy

Why would you want to stand there waving a stick when you could be playing an instrument?

Wayne Grant

When you start playing these better region teams, you have to play well.

Beau Bridges

And I like music, too, I like playing music.

Antony Garrett Lisi

My friends are all geeks. And many of them are scientists who love playing outside as much as I do.

Derek Bailey

Playing music is not really susceptible to theory much. Circumstances affect it so much.

Chinua Achebe

When we hear a house has fallen do we ask if the ceiling fell with it?

Chinua Achebe

Writers don't give prescriptions. They give headaches!

Chinua Achebe

The only thing we have learnt from experience is that we learn nothing from experience.

David Quammen

Whether you like the label 'Anthropocene' or not, whether you find the prospect of what it signifies inevitable or appalling (or both), the time has come to address its implications, as these thoughtful, battle-tested authors attempt to do. The time has long since come.

Cesare Pavese

Death is repose, but the thought of death disturbs all repose.

Casey Stoner

I'm very thoughtful, and when I make a decision I usually stick to it.

William Shakespeare

That is not the best sermon which makes the hearers go away talking to one another and praising the speaker, but which makes them go away thoughtful and serious, and hastening to be alone.

C. S. Lewis

Your Majesty would have a perfect right to strike off his head," said Peridan. "Such an assault as he made puts him on a level with assassins." "It is very true," said Edmund. "But even a traitor may mend. I have known one that did." And he looked very thoughtful.

Charlaine Harris

I snuck a look to see how Eric was taking this, and he was staring at me the same way the Monroe vampires had. Thoughtful. Hungry. "That's interesting," he said. "I had a psychic once. It was incredible." "Did the psychic think so?