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.

David McCullough

History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.

David McCullough

No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read.

C. Wright Mills

History is the shank of the social sciences.

Cesare Pavese

For women, history does not exist. Murasaki, Sappho, and Madame Lafayette might be their own contemporaries.

Cary Grant

Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.

E. Hicks

When you think about it, history is made to be broken. That's the way we look at it.

Kurt Vonnegut

History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again.

Kurt Vonnegut

History! Read it and weep!

Edward Gibbon

But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous.

Charles Dickens

Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you've conquered human nature .

Alan Watts

The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.

Chip Kidd

Yes, Garnett Grey was an Architect. Were a psychoanalyst to approach him from behind, tap his shoulder, and say 'Humanity,' Garrett'd spin and respond, without hesitation, 'Solvable'.

Chinua Achebe

We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own.

Chinua Achebe

We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own. The Igbo, always practical, put it concretely in their proverb Onye ji onye n'ani ji onwe ya: 'He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.'

David Mitchell

Anticipating the end of the world is humanity's oldest passtime

David Mitchell

Your turn has come to sift through the dreck of humanity for rare specks of originality

David Mitchell

The better organized the state, the duller its humanity.

David Kim

Our identity was bestowed upon us by God and when humanity rebelled against God, we were divorced from the source of our identity. In this vacuum, work can wrongfully become the source of our identity wreaking havoc on our lives and work. Work was never meant to carry the weight of our identity.

Charles Dickens

The civility which money will purchase, is rarely extended to those who have none.

Charles Dickens

Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, are all very good words for the lips.

Charles Dickens

I made a compact with myself that in my person literature should stand by itself, of itself, and for itself.

Charles Caleb Colton

If we steal thoughts from the moderns, it will be cried down as plagiarism; if from the ancients, it will be cried up as erudition.

Charles Caleb Colton

There is nothing more imprudent than excessive prudence.

Charles Caleb Colton

Bigotry murders religion to frighten fools with her ghost.

Charles Caleb Colton

The Grecian’s maxim would indeed be a sweeping clause in Literature; it would reduce many a giant to a pygmy; many a speech to a sentence; and many a folio to a primer.

Charles Caleb Colton

Those that are the loudest in their threats are the weakest in their actions.

Charles Dickens

We are so very 'umble.

Natsuo Kirino

I started writing juvenile novels around 1985. I never really thought of it as a career, but more as a way to make a living.

Ellen Potter

I don't plot my novels - I move along with my characters.

Godfrey Gao

'The Mortal Instruments' is based on a series of novels by Cassandra Clare; it has been a New York Times bestseller, so it is pretty popular.

Laurence Housman

On that other novels followed: but I still wrote fairy tales and dreamy poems of another world.

Graham Swift

The novel that's contemporary in the sense of being wholly 'of now' is an impossibility, if only because novels may take years to write, so the 'now' with which they begin will be defunct by the time they're finished.

Ezra Taft Benson

Many novels and modern publications are corrupters of morals or distorters of truth.

Alice Oswald

People are so used to reading novels now, they just read a poem straight through to get the meaning. And that's something totally different from the slow way you read something if it's a tune; which to me a poem has to be.

Deborah Moggach

My first novel, 'You Must be Sisters,' was started in Pakistan. I've wrote several novels and a TV drama set or partly-set there.

John Irving

I find screenplays easy to write, my novels being very visual. You see what people look like. The physical action is described.

Charley Casserly

We're going to get offers for this pick. We've already had discussions with teams. I think there's value in our pick.

Joan Chen

There are only so many roles as empresses... but I've had a lot of offers to play vampires.

Wesley Ruggles

A figure with curves always offers a lot of interesting angles.

Rob Portman

I would say unless we see offers from other countries, particularly the EU, on ... reducing tariffs, we will not be able to see a successful round,

Rebel Wilson

I wrote my own play, 'The Westie Monologues,' about where I'm from in Australia, and it was very successful. From that, I started getting offers from television.

Chris Cornell

I think the concept of commercials, for example, I have had offers to do songs in different commercials, and it is not what I have liked.

Ram Dass

The gift you offer another person is just your being.

Laura Puchowicz

We already have offers on some of the units.

Paul Blake

We will get the offers (to the players) out and see what we can do.

James Pedderson

I think reason has to prevail in some of these instances.

Al Goldman

What has been going on is a very sharp reaction to a slowing economy.

Brandon Marshall

I wouldn’t change any of my reactions

Ted Sarandos

'Marco Polo' had some negative reactions in the press. Viewers have loved it, and the volume of viewing has been phenomenal.

Henrik Gullberg

The reaction is not surprising. The expectations were skewed to the upside.

Larry Ellison

My first reaction is not if I live to a thousand years. But who knows?

Don Carty

My first reaction is it could have been a lot worse than it was.

Jim Tressel

Obviously, my reaction to that is it's sad.

Colin Lee

Jody is very, very disappointed with his reaction

Kate Warne

I think in Toronto we're seeing reaction to the Lucent pre-announcement with Nortel, which is down,

Don Marquis

Some persons are likeable in spite of their unswerving integrity.

Brad Childress

If a daily, 'How you doing, Terrell?' is antagonistic or spiteful then I must be on the wrong planet.

Brad Childress

If a daily, 'How you doing' or a 'What's up' is antagonistic or spiteful then I must be on the wrong planet.

Dallas Willard

Suppose our failures occur, not in spite of what we are doing, but precisely because of it.

Bette Midler

I love nature, in spite of what it did to me.

Tim Murtaugh

Russ Potts is an angry, bitter, spiteful man.

Paul Mooney

Sometimes, what you do you have no control over because it's predestined. It's gonna happen in spite of you. There's nothing you can do about it.

Lee Matthews

The wind made it very tough to play in spite of the warm day.

Edward Lear

In spite of all their friends could say, / On a winter's morn, on a stormy day, / In a sieve they went to sea!