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.

Dorothy Rothschild Parker

Where's the man could ease a heart / Like a satin gown?

Earl Wilson

Poise: the ability to be ill at ease inconspicuously.

Craig Albright

We want to put the kids at ease and focus on the things that they're going to need to get past the falling-down part. Instead of telling them, 'Oh, well, this first day or two is going to be brutal,' the focus is on the things that will really help them.

Bernard Malamud

You can't eat language but it eases thirst.

Stone Gossard

We're going to make better and better records as we get older, especially considering this one kind of rocks harder. Why should we be rocking harder now? Isn't this when we're supposed to ease into the whole Pink Floyd groove?

Benjamin Franklin

Would you live with ease, Do what you ought, and not what you please.

Benjamin Franklin

The electrical matter consists of particles extremely subtile, since it can permeate common matter, even the densest metals, with such ease and freedom as not to receive any perceptible resistance.

David A. Siegel

The Web itself doesn't as much change the way we do things as it changes the ease with which we do things. And that changes the way we do everything.

David Cohen

She herself feels comfortable now and that should help ease pressure on the financial markets. Many investors had thought that the sooner (she ends the emergency rule), the better for the economy.

John Ruskin

The persons who remain poor are the entirely foolish, the entirely wise, the idle, the reckless, the humble, the thoughtful, the dull, the imaginative, the sensitive, the well-informed, the improvident, the irregularly and impulsively wicked, the clu

Linus Torvalds

I personally think of Linux development as being pretty non-localized, and I work with all the people entirely over e-mail - even if they happen to be working in the Portland area.

Uzo Aduba

My finding of myself as an artist, which I think in itself helped me to find just who I am and how I want to express myself, is entirely - in conjunction, of course, with my family, particularly my mom - founded on teachers.

Kristin Gore

In actuality, 'Sammy's House' can and should be read as an entirely fictional comedy set in a fascinating political world.

Eric Nylund

'Ghosts of Onyx' is the end of one chapter in the 'Halo' saga - and hopefully the start of an entirely new one!

Mark Geragos

We might as well open it up entirely and pollute the entire state.

Fred Wilpon

We're a sports service, not entirely a Mets service.

Terry Zwigoff

Maybe if I found something I was really passionate about, which is entirely possible, I would make another documentary, but it's not a good career choice for anybody. I don't recommend it.

Laura Spencer

Auditioning is an entirely different part of what we do as actors.

Charles Stross

I don't do flash fiction.

China Mieville

I'd never been to a science-fiction convention until I became a professional writer.

China Mieville

I'm a science fiction and fantasy geek.

China Mieville

One of the things that I love so much about fantasy and science fiction is that the weirdness that it creates is always at its best completely its own end and also metaphorically and symbolically laden.

David Morrell

There are no inferior types of fiction, only inferior practitioners of them.

David Mitchell

Implausible truth can serve one better than plausible fiction

Chad Harbach

Fiction and nonfiction, for me, involve very different processes.

Kurt Vonnegut

What do my science fiction stories have in common with pornography? Fantasies of an impossibly hospitable world, I'm told.

Edith Wharton

Dialogue in fiction should be reserved for the culminating moments and regarded as the spray into which the great wave of narrative breaks in curving towards the watcher on the shore.

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.

Alan Moore

Life isn't divided into genres

David Shields

Genre is a minimum security prison,

Billy Gibbons

There's not a single genre that is hard to find or hard to get.

Carlos Fuentes

Don't classify me, read me. I'm a writer, not a genre.

M. J. Rose

When I was a kid, I read many of my mom's books. Sometimes, there were mysteries, but there were no delineations, and my mother never talked about book genres. Nor did we differentiate genres in school.

Thomas Ligotti

I'm completely indifferent to what genre I read provided that I feel sympathy with how a writer perceives being alive in the world.

Emraan Hashmi

I am not doing comedy because the genre is successful. If that was the case, I would have done a run-of-the-mill comedy film. I set my own trends. I like to give something new and different to my audiences. I want to do the kind of comedy that has been missing till now.

Kathy Najimy

It's really not the genre for me, or the venue, it's the writing.

Tom Selleck

I think there have been more movies in the Western genre than any other. I grew up watching those movies.

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

She was the most wonderful woman for prowling about the house. How she got from one story to another was a mystery beyond solution. A lady so decorous in herself, and so highly connected, was not to be suspected of dropping over the banisters or sliding down them, yet her extraordinary facility of locomotion suggested the wild idea.

Charles Soule

Ive always loved the idea of mythologies linked to or underlying everyday life, like the kami gods of Shintoism, where every rock, tree and stream has its own little god associated with it.

Charles Stross

The idea of Curious Yellow, of surrender to a higher cause, seems to appeal to a certain small subset of humanity. These people manipulate the worm, customizing its payload to establish quisling dictatorships in its shadow, and the horrors these gauleiters invent in its service are far worse than the crude but direct tactics the original worm used.

Charles Stanley

People don't like the idea of consequences. They want to be able to live their life freely and do what they want to do without any consequences. And we know that's just not the way life is.

Charles Spurgeon

Abhor all idea of being saved by good works, but O, be as full of good works as if you were to be saved by them!

Alan Watts

The difficulty for most of us in the modern world is that the old-fashioned idea of God has become incredible or implausible.

Alan Watts

The idea of the Universe being ruled by that marvelous old gentleman, is no longer plausible. It isn't that anybody has disproved it, but it just somehow doesn't go with the vast infinitude of the Universe.

Alan Watts

To remain caught up in ideas and words about Zen is, as the old masters say, to stink of Zen.

Alan Watts

In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all.

Tawni O'Dell

I write literary, not commercial, fiction - or so I've been told by my publishers who are proud I write literary fiction but secretly wish I wrote commercial.

Ellen Potter

I resisted children's writing for a long time. I saw myself as a writer of literary fiction. But I had so much more fun writing kids' books.

Anne Fadiman

The problem with the literary hothouse of New York City is that people spend so much time looking in the mirror. They go to parties with people who are just like them, and they write novels about people who are just like them. It's limiting.

Ian Mcewan

Something is missing in our culture. We can't quite celebrate the scientific literary tradition.

Aberjhani

Literary genres and techniques tend to take form in one's mind somewhat the way computer templates provide form for different computer tasks.

Siri Hustvedt

It's not as if I've been unlucky. My books have been published and reviewed. I haven't lived through terrible literary suffering!

Jeffrey Eugenides

One of the reasons I like Barthes more than other writers of that ilk is because he had a literary quality.

Andrea Hirata

I think what matters most in literary work is the context, not the text.

Paul Theroux

Japan, Germany, and India seem to me to have serious writers, readers, and book buyers, but the Netherlands has struck me as the most robust literary culture in the world.

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.

Lee Siegel

'Hotel Rwanda' is an American product, not a Rwandan one, made primarily for American audiences.

Hootie Johnson

We settled on 18-10 primarily in consideration of our patrons.

Lewis F. Powell, Jr.

I am primarily a lawyer. I would rather play in the game than be the umpire.

David Boies

From our perspective, to say that you are going to wait until after the trial to have the examination of the ballots, is backwards, because here the witnesses are primarily the ballots.

Richard Sherman

Luckily, I was blessed to go to Stanford and a school that was primarily focused on academics, so it was a blessing.

Jared Bernstein

has primarily to do with the compensation the typical worker earns.

Franz Wright

I write and have done so primarily for personal pleasure.

Brendan Myers

The point of a philosophical spirit is to rely primarily upon one's own thinking.

George Dzundza

I'm here to serve. I was trained as an actor to see the writer as the ultimate creator... and that primarily what actors do is interpret.

Lord Alfred Tennyson

Make Thou my spirit pure and clear/ As are the frosty skies.

Bruce Roper

Silliness, pure silliness. There was Roy Rogers' Sons of the Pioneers, there was the Sons of the San Joaquin. It was in that spirit, and tongue-in-cheek, but we've had it for all these years and it's served us well, I think.

Russ Rader

Most truck and SUV bumpers are purely decorative.

Mary Tyler Moore

I can't eat pure sugar. I can't have candy.

Joel Bruckenstein

I'd like to see him have more pure value exposure,

George Villiers

Make my breast transparent as pure crystal, that the world, jealous of me, may see the foulest thought my heart does hold.

Donald Harrison

I suspect what it is is pure stress.

Doug Green

We're pretty kid-friendly. With the pure kids' shows, all the songs are up-tempo. We keep it moving.

Jeff Corbett

There are no pure, pure climber's stages, no 10-mile, 14-percent brutes. And there are no bone-flat sprinters' stages, either.

Richard Berthelsen

We're insisting that it be sooner rather than later.

Jim Calhoun

Like Hubie, and sometimes like Jim, I can be rather lengthy.

Rudi Giuliani

made it a rule ... rather than the exception.

Thomas Mars

I'm a lazy guy. I can't focus for too long. I'd rather hear a record that has no filler.

Kate Bush

I don't know about hiding away, but I really only like to present myself when I'm working on something - it's more my work I like to present to the world rather than myself.

Keeley Hawes

I am not into action and adventure on holiday; that doesn't really do it for me. I would much rather go and lie down.

Abigail Perkins

Mohamed stated he would rather kill only Americans.

Suzanne Farrell

So I think it is rather strange that I got into ballet, something that I hadn't seen.

Michael Messner

She was rather abrasive and difficult, but it must've taken that kind of personality to survive and to do what she did in the 1960s.

Charles Caleb Colton

In science, reason is the guide; in poetry, taste. The object of the one is truth, which is uniform and indivisible; the object of the other is beauty, which is multiform and varied.

Charles Caleb Colton

No disorders have employed so many quacks, as those that have no cure; and no sciences have exercised so many quills, as those that have no certainty.

Charles Caleb Colton

The acquirements of science may be termed the armour of the mind; but that armour would be worse than useless, that cost us all we had, and left us nothing to defend.

Alan Watts

We are not clear as to the role in life of these chemicals; nor are we clear as to the role of the physician. You know, of course, that in ancient times there was no clear distinction between priest and physician.

Dave Barry

What happens if a big asteroid hits Earth ? Judging from realistic simulations involving a sledge hammer and a common laboratory frog, we can assume it will be pretty bad.

Dave Barry

Scientists tell us that the fastest animal in the world, with a speed of 120 mph, is a cow dropped out of a helicopter.

Dave Barry

Here's a simple experiment that you might want to try if there is absolutely nothing else going on in your life. All you need is a cork, a bar magnet, and a pail of water. Simply attach your magnet to your cork, then drop it into the water, and voilà (literally, "you have a compass")-you have a compass. How does it work? Simple. Notice that, no matter which way you turn the bucket, the cork always floats on top of the water (unless the magnet is too heavy). Using this scientific principle, early hardy mariners were able to tell at a glance whether they were sinking!

David Sarnoff

I ... began my career as a wireless amateur. After 43 years in radio, I do not mind confessing that I am still an amateur. Despite many great achievements in the science of radio and electronics, what we know today is far less than what we have still to learn.

David Sarnoff

Freedom is the oxygen without which science cannot breathe.

Carlos Slim

All times are good time for those who know how to work and have the tools to do so.

Madeleine Albright

Nobody's ever said that pins are a tool of diplomacy.

Charles Lyell

No tools have yet been met with in any of the gravels occurring at the higher levels of the valley of the Seine; but no importance can be attached to this negative fact, as so little search has yet been made for them.

Billy Higgins

If I couldn't do it, then I'd be defeated. I've got the tools to do it. I never did question my tools.

David Ricardo

Money is neither a material to work upon nor a tool to work with.

David Brenner

Digital brand integration is part of the evolution of product placement. It's simply another tool marketers use to get products integrated into shows. If you can put it in a package, we can put it in a show.

Dee Hock

Only fools worship their tools

Agnes Varda

Sometimes I want to work with a DP, sometimes I want to work myself. I go to 35mm, 16mm, it's all the same, but it depends on what you want to tell and what are the tools you need.

Charles Edwards

The budget evolved from a management tool into an obstacle to management.

Arthur Bryant

Say what you have to say in the fewest possible words.

Robert Klein

In some articles written about me, writers have said I'm a link between the old and the new, and I think, in a certain sense, that's legitimate.

Brian K. Vaughan

There are probably writers who are much more visual than I am and some who are less. I like to think of myself as a happy medium.

Charlaine Harris

Well, you know, writers just suck up new experiences - we're just like the vacuum cleaners of newness.

Sara Sheridan

Scottish writers are particularly successful in the crime genre.

Aminatta Forna

Most writers I know go for word counts, and I used to be a journalist, so I guess that's ingrained.

Claire Tomalin

Most writers can tell stories of how their books failed to be made into films.

John Dos Passos

If there is a special Hell for writers it would be in the forced contemplation of their own works.

Jean Paul

Never write on a subject until you have read yourself full of it.