Famous Quotes & Sayings

Charles Dickens

There is not a manufacturer or tradesman in existence, who would not employ a man who takes a reasonable degree of pride in the appearance of himself and those about him, in preference to a sullen, slovenly fellow, who works doggedly on, regardless of his own clothing and that of his wife and children, and seeming to take pleasure or pride in nothing.

Charles Dickens

Father Time is not always a hard parent and though he tarries for none of his children, often lays his hand lightly upon those who have used him well; making them old men and women inexorably enough, but leaving their hearts and spirits young and in full vigor. With such people the gray head is but the impression of the old fellow's hand in giving them his blessing, and every wrinkle but a notch in the quiet calendar of a well-spent life.

Charles Dickens

There is nothing--no, nothing--innocent or good, that dies and is forgotten; let us hold to that faith or none. An infant, a prattling child, dying in the cradle, will live again in the better thoughts of those that loved it, and play its part through them in the redeeming actions of the world, though its body be burnt to ashes or drowned in the deep sea.

Charles Dickens

In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice.

Charles Dickens

It always grieves me to contemplate the initiation of children into the ways of life when they are scarcely more than infants. It checks their confidence and simplicity, two of the best qualities that heaven gives them, and demands that they share our sorrows before they are capable of entering into our enjoyments.

Charles Caleb Colton

How strange it is that we of the present day are constantly praising that past age which our fathers abused, and as constantly abusing that present age, which our children will praise.

Charles Caleb Colton

Religion has treated knowledge sometimes as an enemy, sometimes as a hostage; often as a captive and more often as a child; but knowledge has become of age, and religion must either renounce her acquaintance, or introduce her as a companion and respect her as a friend.

Charles Caleb Colton

Gaming is the child of avarice, but the parent of prodigality.

Charles Caleb Colton

Avarice begets more vices than Priam did children and like Priam survives them all. It starves its keeper to surfeit those who wish him dead, and makes him submit to more mortifications to lose heaven than the martyr undergoes to gain it.

Charles Dickens

Happiness is a gift and the trick is not to expect it, but to delight in it when it comes.

Charles Caleb Colton

If kings would only determine not to extend their dominions until they had filled them with happiness, they would find the smallest territories too large, but the longest life too short for the full accomplishment of so grand and so noble an ambition.

Charles Caleb Colton

We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine, but if defer tasting them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age.

Charles Caleb Colton

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

What is earthly happiness? that phantom of which we hear so much, and see so little; whose promises are constantly given and constantly broken, but as constantly believed; that cheats us with the sound instead of the substance, and with the blossom instead of the fruit. Like Juno, she is a goddess in pursuit, but a cloud in possession.

Charles Caleb Colton

Ambition makes the same mistake concerning power that avarice makes concerning wealth. She begins by accumulating power as a means to happiness, and she finishes by continuing to accumulate it as an end.

Charles Caleb Colton

Happiness is that single and glorious thing which is the very light and sun of the whole animated universe; and where she is not it were better that nothing should be.

Charles Caleb Colton

Happiness is much more equally divided than some of us imagine. One man shall possess most of the materials, but little of the thing; another may possess much of the thing, but very few of the material. In this particular view of it, happiness had been beautifully compared to the man in the desert--he that gathered much had nothing over, and he that gathered little had no lack.

Charles Caleb Colton

Our minds are as different as our faces. We are all traveling to one destination: happiness, but few are going by the same road.

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.

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.

Kurt Vonnegut

Scientific truth was going to make us so happy and comfortable. What actually happened when I was twenty-one was that we dropped scientific truth on Hiroshima.

Bill Wyman

Companies spend twenty, thirty, forty percent of revenues on advertising to brand their product and to get, essentially, acquire customers cheaply. You get a lot of exposure on something like this.

David Foster Wallace

I had kind of a midlife crisis at twenty which probably doesn’t augur well for my longevity

Donna Air

Life experiences can, at times, be quite humbling, but you learn from them. But I like the changes in my life and what kind of person they've made me into. I'm very open, not as judgmental as I was in my twenties, and a lot more compassionate.

Donald Miller

I am something of a recluse by nature. I am that cordless screwdriver that has to charge for twenty hours to earn ten minutes use. I need that much downtime.

Dalai Lama

Because the twentieth century was a century of violence, let us make the twenty-first a century of dialogue.

Cole Younger

I have been wounded altogether twenty times; eleven of these wounds were received at Northfield.

Bryan Lee O'Malley

I think it's natural as you get to the end of your twenties to start thinking about what you could have done differently - whether they went well or whether they went terribly.

Leslie Mann

I'd never want to go back to being in my twenties or thirties. I was lost and confused and uncomfortable in my own skin.

Brooke Niquette

We're so young, but we're willing to learn. We can do well.

Ed Stewart

Unfortunately, no one other than Southwest has been willing to come to the table.

Steve Kroft

I think you've got be willing as an interviewer to ask the dumb question every now and then.

Loretta Lynch

It's the choices that you make and the things that you're willing to accept and not accept that define who you are.

Scott Carson

wanted more than we were willing to give.

Ben Jonson

I have a humour, / I would not willingly be gulled.

Bryan Winkler

I don't have a lot of hair, but I'm willing to do that.

Loui Antonucci

I don't know that we're willing to do that tonight.

Daniel Kahneman

I have always emphasized the willingness to discard.

Charles Caleb Colton

Women generally consider consequences in love, seldom in resentment.

Charles Caleb Colton

Pleasure is to women what the sun is to the flower; if moderately enjoyed, it beautifies, it refreshes, and it improves; if immoderately, it withers, deteriorates and destroys.

Charles Caleb Colton

Modesty is the richest ornament of a woman ... the want of it is her greatest deformity.

Charles Caleb Colton

A high degree of intellectual refinement in the female is the surest pledge society can have for the improvement of the male.

Charles Caleb Colton

The plainest man who pays attention to women, will sometimes succeed as well as the handsomest man who does not.

Charles Caleb Colton

Women that are the least bashful are often the most modest.

Charles Caleb Colton

Women do not transgress the bounds of decorum so often as men; but when they do, they go greater lengths.

Charles Dickens

She's the sort of woman now,' said Mould, . . . 'one would almost feel disposed to bury for nothing: and do it neatly, too!

Alan Jay Lerner

You see what happens today. Women act like men and want to be treated like women.

Alan Watts

Although profoundly "inconsequential," the Zen experience has consequences in the sense that it may be applied in any direction, to any conceivable human activity, and that wherever it is so applied it lends an unmistakable quality to the work.

Alan Clark

Give a civil servant a good case and he'll wreck it with clichés, bad punctuation, double negatives, and convoluted apology.

Alan Bennett

If I am doing nothing, I like to be doing nothing to some purpose. That is what leisure means.

Alan Ayckbourn

A gentleman ... sleeps at his work. That's what work's for. Why do you think they have the SILENCE notices in the library? So as not to disturb me in my little nook behind the biography shelves.

Al Kaline

You've got to get good habits of working hard so that when that play comes up during the regular season that you're able to complete it and do it the right way.

Akio Morita

Japanese people tend to be much better adjusted to the notion of work, any kind of work, as honorable.

Chloe Sevigny

I do a dance-based cardio workout infused with circuit training, and emphasizing strength and alignment.

Dave Chappelle

If I put forth a legitimate effort, then I feel like, if that doesn't work out, that's all I can do.

Dave Chappelle

I always take a relationship to the next level. If that works out, I take it to the next level after that, until I finally reach that level when it becomes absolutely necessary for me to leave.