Famous Quotes & Sayings

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and cloud which piled up in the west an airy city, wall heaped on wall, and battlement on battlement; the light was all withdrawn; the shining church turned cold and dark; the stream forgot to smile; the birds were silent; and the gloom of winter dwelt on everything.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.

Charles Dickens

Be guided, only by the healer of the sick, the raiser of the dead, the friend of all who were afflicted and forlorn, the patient Master who shed tears of compassion for our infirmities. We cannot but be right if we put all the rest away, and do everything in remembrance of Him. There is no vengeance and no infliction of suffering in His life, I am sure. There can be no confusion in following Him, and seeking for no other footsteps, I am certain!

Charles Dickens

And could I look upon her without compassion, seeing her punishment in the ruin she was, in her profound unfitness for this earth on which she was placed, in the vanity of sorrow which had become a master mania, like the vanity of penitence, the vanity of remorse, the vanity of unworthiness, and other monstrous vanities that have been curses in this world?

Alan Perlis

When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.

Alan Paton

And were your back as broad as heaven, and your purse full of gold, and did your compassion reach from here to hell itself, there is nothing you can do.

Alan Arkin

All I can say is if the part doesn't delight me in some way, or I can't feel any compassion for it, I just can't do it.

Alan Alda

Don't be upset that it takes a long, long time to find wisdom because nobody knows where wisdom can be found. It tends to break out at unexpected times like a rare virus and mostly people with compassion and understanding are susceptible to it.

Chogyam Trungpa

Compassion is not having any hesitation to reflect your light on things

Chogyam Trungpa

When we talk about compassion we talk in terms of being kind. But compassion is not so much being kind; it is being creative [enough] to wake a person up

Dave Davies

We obviously need more love in the world. And we obviously need more compassion and understanding. Our leaders need to really address these issues properly now.

Charles Caleb Colton

God is on the side of virtue; for whoever dreads punishment suffers it, and whoever deserves it, dreads it .

Charles Spurgeon

Death is no punishment to the believer: it is the gate of endless joy.

David Shore

The saying within the writer's room, which were my words of wisdom, if you will, was, "The punishment doesn't have to fit the crime, but there has to be a crime."

Bryan Stevenson

Embracing a certain quotient of racial bias and discrimination against the poor is an inexorable aspect of supporting capital punishment. This is an immoral condition that makes rejecting the death penalty on moral grounds not only defensible but necessary for those who refuse to accept unequal or unjust administration of punishment.

Cesare Beccaria

Crimes are more effectually prevented by the certainty than the severity of punishment

Catherine the Great

All punishments by which the human body might be maimed are barbarbarism.

Kurt Vonnegut

I had taught myself that a human being might as well look for diamond tiaras in the gutter as for rewards and punishments that were fair.

August Strindberg

Religion must be a punishment, because nobody gets religion who does not have a bad conscience.

Bertrand Russell

The twin conceptions of sin and vindictive punishment seem to be at the root of much that is most vigorous, both in religion and politics.