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.

Charles Caleb Colton

That is true beauty which has not only a substance, but a spirit; a beauty that we must intimately know, justly to appreciate.

Alan Ball

It's a great thing when you realize you still have the ability to surprise yourself. Makes you wonder what else you can do that you've forgotten about.

Alan Ball

It’s hard to stay mad when there’s so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I’m seeing it all at once, and it’s too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that’s about to burst. And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain, and I can’t feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life.

Alan Ball

Never underestimate the power of denial.

Alan Ball

Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once and it's too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst.

Alan Ball

You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure.

Akhenaton

When virtue and modesty enlighten her charms, the lustre of a beautiful woman is brighter than the stars of heaven, and the influence of her power it is in vain to resist.

Chita Rivera

Beauty is not everything!

Dave Barry

By today's beauty standards, of course, Marilyn Monroe was an oil tanker.

Louis Gossett, Jr.

I didn't know anything about acting, I didn't know anything about theater, but I was just an exceptional student at high school. I wanted to play ball; I'm going after a basketball scholarship and be a doctor. I got injured and my marks began to drop.

Brian Keith

We started slowly, but then began to put things together. We were 3-9 to begin the year, but we have gone 9-4 the rest of the way.

John Timoney

We stopped the rescue operation around 11 o'clock (Thursday) night, ... As the tide came in, the structure began to move, and other parts began to collapse again. We made the decision to pull our divers out.

Helen Scannell

We started from scratch. Immediately people began dropping things off - and they were nice things. Our goods are gently used. We are not a junkyard or garbage drop.

Leslie Cockburn

When I was at graduate school in London, I began working at NBC News, which had a thriving documentary unit.

M.I.A.

Sri Lanka is an island off the coast of India. There's two ethnicities there; one the Sinhalese, which is the majority and the government, and the minority, who are the Tamils. That's where I'm from. And my lifetime sort of began there; I spent 10 years, and I was there during when the war started and fled as a refugee to England.

Natasha Trethewey

Writing 'Native Guard,' I didn't know I was working on a single book. I began writing that book because I was interested in the lesser-known history of these black soldiers stationed off the coast of my hometown.

Natasha Tsakos

I was commissioned in 2003 to create an original show, and began developing 'Upwake.' 'Upwake' tells the story of Zero, a modern-day business man, going to work with his life in a suitcase, stuck between dream and reality and not able to decipher the two. I wanted 'Upwake' to have the same audiovisual qualities as a movie would.

Ma Jian

While I was writing 'Stick Out Your Tongue' in Beijing, the police began knocking on my door again. As soon as I finished the book, I moved to Hong Kong so that I could work undisturbed on my next novel.

Byron Katie

It's our nature to be free, and until we're stuck in a stressful belief system, we're pretty happy.

Madhur Bhandarkar

My beliefs encompass all religions. But I never show my religious inclination in my films. My characters have dark sides; they aren't the god-fearing characters. It wasn't a conscious decision. I'm a very lazy and emotional person who connects with the common man.

Ryan Tuck

The point of any cartoon in any newspaper is to challenge belief systems. We knew it would offend, but that doesn't make it the explicit goal of the cartoon.

Curtis Allen

There are some groups that are resistant to vaccination because of the belief that influenza shot causes the flu. It doesn't.

Kurt Vonnegut

Belief is nearly the whole of the universe whether based on truth or not.

August Wilson

Have a belief in yourself that is bigger than anyone's disbelief.

Andrew Ference

We also share in the belief we do have what it takes in this locker-room and there's no great piece of the puzzle out there we're missing.

Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Even the smallest act of discipleship or the tiniest ember of belief can become a blazing bonfire of a consecrated life.

Deepak Chopra

Even the most time-honoured truths do not have to be accepted until they are your truths.

Alan Alda

I was brought up as a Catholic, and I'm no longer a Catholic. I don't talk about my beliefs too much in public probably because I feel very strongly that it's something personal - more than personal, it's private.

Alan Alda

I used to be a Catholic. I left because I object to conversion by concussion. If you don't agree with what they teach, you get clobbered over the head until you do. All that does is change the shape of the head.

Arthur Peacocke

In the nineteenth century, many Anglican theologians, both evangelical and catholic, embraced positively the proposal of evolution.

Antony Gormley

I was educated by monks - I thank them dearly for the education they gave me, but I am no longer a Catholic.

Denis McDonough

I grew up in Stillwater, Minnesota in a proud Catholic family.

Denis Leary

I'm a lapsed Catholic in the best sense of the word.

Bill Maher

I don't understand why the police are infallible. They remind me a lot of the Catholic Church.

Bernard of Clairvaux

Persecution shows who is a hireling, and who a true pastor.

Bernard of Clairvaux

Hell is full of good wishes or desires.

Carl Sagan

Better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy.

Roger B. Taney

Unquestionably, it is the duty of every master to watch over the religious and moral culture of his slaves, and to give them every comfort and privilege that is not incompatible with the continued existence of the relations between them.

Don Wallace

We are lucky to have two strong lawmakers like Simpson and Peterson looking out for America's sugar producers and the policy on which they depend. Some sugar policy opponents want to put sugar farmers out of business, and it's comforting to know that our elected representatives will not let that happen.

Nayvadius Cash

I'm always most comfortable in the studio. It's my comfort zone. I love being there, and I love making records.

Gretchen Rubin

Children's literature is one of my joys, and it's also my mental comfort food.

Kurt Vonnegut

Never have I risked my life, or even my comfort, in the service of mankind. Shame on me.

Bo Burnham

When life gets you down, make a comforter!

Edward Gibbon

Hope, the best comfort of our imperfect condition.

Edward Livingston

To cure sometimes, to relieve often, to comfort always.

Camille Paglia

Nothing is more hackneyed than the liberal dogma that shock value confers automatic importance on an artwork.

Carolyn Wells

Every dogma must have its day.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

It's wrong to treat Muslims as if they will never find their John Stuart Mill. Christianity and Judaism show people can be very dogmatic and then open up.

Dan Barker

Please clean up after your dogma.

Adolf Hitler

The dogma of Christianity gets worn away before the advances of science. Religion will have to make more and more concessions. Gradually the myths crumble.

Albert Einstein

The religion of the future will be cosmic religion. It will transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology.

Adrienne Rich

As a very young poet, I had been brought up on that dogma that politics was bad for poetry.

George W. Romney

Dogmatic ideological parties tend to splinter the political and social fabric of a nation.

Anton LaVey

No hoary falsehood shall be a truth to me; no stifling dogma shall encramp my pen!

Aiden Wilson Tozer

True and absolute freedom is only found in the presence of God.

David Selby

I never found it frustrating not speaking.

David McCullough

The more we see the founders as humans the more we can understand them.

Catherine Bell

It's changing a bit, but the thing in LA is everyone is either in the industry, or knows someone who is in the industry. So, they don't let on that they recognize you, that's what I've found out.

Howard Rubenstein

The Post found out about this late yesterday afternoon. They had no inkling whatsoever a scandal was brewing.

Mehmet Okur

We struggled with Jason Kidd and Richard Jefferson but we found a way to help each other and I think we did a good job tonight.

Michael Lynch

We are making a friendly offer to Reynolds, ... We were shocked when we found out that Alcoa had made its offer and we assembled ourselves as quickly as we could to put together this proposal.

David Brooks

Emotion is the foundation of reason.

Baron Davis

I am the donation to the foundation.

Jonathan Tasini

The people who supported the war must be held accountable.

Jackie Robinson

We have a social responsibility and we are held to a higher standard than other institutions,

Dr. Fukino

We have never held out or said that we are doing everything perfectly, and we have accomplished everything. We have said that there's more work to be done, but that we are moving forward.

Kenneth Fisher

Fundamentally cheap stocks are often held in low regard by market participants. Something may be tainting their perception in investors' minds.

Bill Kennedy

We would've liked to have taken those points and held on to them a little.

Paul McGinley

We're in the room where Sam (Torrance) held all the team meetings in 2002, it's the first time I've been in here since then.

Katy Perry

I just feel like I have this gift that I've been given. It's like, 'Someone unwrap it! Here it is!' That drive can't be held down.

Heidi Perlman

We want to make sure these kids aren't held up.

J. K. Rowling

I think the next thing I publish will be for children, but I don't really want to be held to that because I also know what my next book for adults will be, and I really like that, too, so it depends. I've always had more than one thing going.

Charles Caleb Colton

Public charities and benevolent associations for the gratuitous relief of every species of distress, are peculiar to Christianity; no other system of civil or religious policy has originated them; they form its highest praise and characteristic feature.

Charles Caleb Colton

All wars of interference, arising from an officious intrusion into the concerns of other states; all wars of ambition, carried on for the purposes of aggrandizement; and all wars of aggression, undertaken for the purpose of forcing an assent to this or that set of religious opinions; all such wars are criminal in their very outset, and have hypocrisy for their common base.

Charles Dickens

How many families, whose members have been dispersed and scattered far and wide, in the restless struggles of life, are then reunited, and meet once again in that happy state of companionship and mutual goodwill, which is a source of such pure and unalloyed delight; and one so incompatible with the cares and sorrows of the world, that the religious belief of the most civilized nations, and the rude traditions of the roughest savages, alike number it among the first joys of a future condition of existence, provided for the blessed and happy!

Charles Stross

One ape's hallucination is another ape's religious experience - it just depends on which one’s god module is overactive at the time.

Charles Stross

Any civilization where the main symbol of religious veneration is a tool of execution is a bad place to have children.

Charles Stross

A religious college in Cairo is considering issues of nanotechnology: If replicators are used to prepare a copy of a strip of bacon, right down to the molecular level, but without it ever being part of a pig, how is it to be treated?

Charles Stanley

The best way in the world to deceive believers is to cloak a message in religious language and declare that it conveys some new insight from God.

Charles Spurgeon

Oh, Brethren, it is sickening work to think of your cushioned seats, your chants, your anthems, your choirs, your organs, your gowns, and your bands, and I know not what besides, all made to be instruments of religious luxury, if not of pious dissipation, while ye need far more to be stirred up and incited to holy ardor for the propagation of the truth as it is in Jesus.

Charles Spurgeon

We would labor earnestly to raise a believer in salvation by free will into a believer in salvation by grace, for we long to see all religious teaching built upon the solid rock of truth and not upon the sand of imagination. At the same time, our grand object is not the revision of opinions, but the regeneration of natures. We should bring men to Christ, not to our own particular views of Christianity.

Austin Farrer

The notion of God is the notion of richness without accident

Tim Williams

You know everything you need to know, but the richness is gone,

David Whyte

We speak continually of saving time, but time in its richness is most often lost to us when we are busy without relief.

John Lawson

The Inhabitants of Carolina, thro' the Richness of the Soil, live an easy and pleasant Life.

Michael J. Fox

Life delivered me a catastrophe, but I found a richness of soul.

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?

Charles Dickens

Every traveler has a home of his own, and he learns to appreciate it the more from his wandering.

Alanis Morissette

My yearn for home is broadened Patriotism expanded By callings from beyond So I pack my things Nothing precious All things sacred

Alan Rickman

Nothing gives me as much pleasure as travelling. I love getting on trains and boats and planes.

Al Stewart

Do you remember the church across the sands? You stood outside and planned to travel the lands, where the pilgrims go. So you packed your world up inside a canvas sack, set off down the highway with your rings and Kerouac. Someone said they saw you in Nepal a long time back. Tell me why you look away, don't you have a word to say?

Chief Seattle

Take only memories, leave only footprints.

Chief Joseph

Let me be a free man - free to travel, free to stop, free to work.

David Sedaris

As a foreigner in London, I like that there are so many other foreigners.

Dave Barry

Never trust anything you read in a travel article. Travel articles appear in publications that sell large, expensive advertisements to tourism-related industries, and these industries do not wish to see articles with headlines like: URUGUAY: DON'T BOTHER.

Dave Barry

Just get on any major highway, and eventually it will dead-end in a Disney parking area large enough to have its own climate, populated by large nomadic families who have been trying to find their cars since the Carter administration.