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.

Chris Bohjalian

The honest answer is more complex. On some level I was sent. Or inspired. Or called. But my calling, such as it was, wasn't a single booming invitation from above (really, is it ever?)...

David Sedaris

I felt uncomfortable calling myself a writer until I started with 'The New Yorker,' and then I was like, 'Okay, now you can call yourself that.

Louis Stokes

There have been a couple of instances prior to now where members of the House have filed resolutions calling for release of the sealed files which were developed during the course of our committee's investigation.

Michael Moriarty

Film is something that came later into my life. I had a Jesuit education, and I consider acting and the theater as kind of a calling - a vocation.

Marianne Moore

I see no reason for calling my work poetry except that there is no other category in which to put it.

Janet Allen

The people who use (the vouchers) really like them, and some of them start calling us around now wondering when they're going to start giving them out. They love taking their kids and getting fresh fruits and vegetables.

David Rosenberg

The only reason I'm calling for a rate hike is because that's what they told us they are going to do.

Jack Germond

Unsurprisingly, the poll-takers don't talk a lot in public about the ignorance of the electorate on political and public policy matters. And the politicians are not going to disclose the, let's say, limited body of knowledge in their constituencies. You don't get elected calling your voters airheads.

Jaret Wright

We're in a race to get to the playoffs, so I'll do everything I can to get back out there, ... There's no calling in sick now. You've got to get out there.

Charles Dickens

I have made up my mind that I must have money, Pa. I feel that I can't beg it, borrow it, or steal it; and so I have resolved that I must marry it.

Charles Dickens

All knives and forks were working away at a rate that was quite alarming; very few words were spoken; and everybody seemed to eat his utmost, in self defence, as if a famine were expected to set in before breakfast-time to-morrow morning, and it had become high time to assert the first law of nature.

Charles Dickens

He would make a lovely corpse.

Charles Dickens

It is an old prerogative of kings to govern everything but their passions.

Charles Dickens

Although a skillful flatterer is a most delightful companion if you have him all to yourself, his taste becomes very doubtful when he takes to complimenting other people.

Charles Dickens

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!

Charles Dickens

If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.

Charles Caleb Colton

Fame is an undertaker that pays but little attention to the living, but bedizens the dead, furnishes out their funerals, and follows them to the grave

Charles Caleb Colton

Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes better than the dinner.

Alan Moore

Right from the outset, the prevailing mindset in British comics fandom was a radical and progressive one. We were all proto-hippies, and we all thought that comics would be greatly improved if everything was a bit psychedelic like Jim Steranko.

David Sedaris

Sometimes the sins you haven't committed are all you have left to hold onto.

David Cross

I'd say 95 percent of my audience was white. They were mostly kind of older hipster folks like myself.

Caitlin Moran

I was brought up in a kind of, you know, very hippie, liberal family. And it was just always automatically assumed that men and women were equal and indeed superior.

C.J. Wilson

I can't be one of those hipster guys with a beard when I have a hair campaign. I strive to look a little bit more... all-American.

Lil Mama

Ever since I was a kid, I was always a fan of hip hop. If you get your limelight whether your sixteen or twenty-one or wherever you're at, you get your lime when you get your lime, but if you're a part of hip hop and a child of hip hop, then you will always be a part of hip hop.

Kurt Vonnegut

To whom it may concern: It is springtime. It is late afternoon.

Diablo Cody

I myself identify as a recovering Blockhead. You'd be surprised how many twenty- and thirty-something hipster chicks have the NKOTB skeleton in their closet, albeit artfully concealed by stacks of Ksubi skinny jeans and ironic Judas Priest T-shirts.

Diablo Cody

I've been meaning to write about the Rolling Stones, but I am the furthest thing from a hipster rock journalist.

Bill Taylor

We want to send the message that New Orleans is up and running and it's OK to come back.

Mark Regev

We want to send a very strong and sharp message to the Palestinians, and the temporary suspension of talks is that message.

David Koresh

I am more willing to come out when I get my message from my commander.

Casey Kasem

If the beat gets to the audience, and the message touches them, you've got a hit.

Casey Kasem

But otherwise, music is about a beat and a message.

Edwin Land

We can be dramatic, even theatrical; we can be persuasive; but the message we are telling must be true.

Megan Challender

We want people to understand our message is one of peace and not one of hate.

Mark Phelan

Ultimately, the responsibility rests with the drivers, and they seemed to respond to the message we were putting out.

Brian Eno

Music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very, very rich and complex, and the words either serve to exclude certain ones or point up certain others.

Alan Rickman

You can act truthfully or you can lie. You can reveal things about yourself or you can hide. Therefore, the audience recognizes something about themselves or they don't -- You hope they don't leave the theatre thinking that was nice...now where's the cab?'

Alain Robert

Sometimes doing the forbidden can be nice.

Alan Alda

I don't really worry about the size of the part much any more. It's nice to have more time to work on the character, and to have big scenes to play. But if there's something playable there, and if it's interesting to do, then that's nice.

Al Neuharth

Be as nice as possible and as nasty as necessary.

Chris Claremont

I'm the best there is at what I do but what I do best isn't very nice

Chiwetel Ejiofor

I am aware that I have been incredibly fortunate in my life to work with the people that I have worked with and pursue the projects that I have been able to do. There are so many films that I have done that I really, as a film person, as a film fan, that I like. And that is a nice place to think of a career in.

Chet Baker

I don't believe that jazz will ever really die. It's a nice way to express yourself.

Dave Franco

Recently I've been looking for something new. The past few projects I've worked on, I keep getting cast as the asshole. I promise I'm a nice guy and not the asshole that everyone keeps seeing.

David Schwimmer

I think I'm a very very nice director. Very supportive, very nurturing. I definitely try to challenge my actors but I think I'm very supportive.

Billy Connolly

I've always been fascinated by the difference between the jokes you can tell your friends but you can't tell to an audience. There's a fine line you have to tread because you don't know who is out there in the auditorium. A lot of people are too easily offended.

Toby Shook

Obviously, the tactics offended some people and he quit doing it after that.

Brad Williams

Everyone's extremely and easily offended now.

David A. Bednar

To be offended is a choice we make; it is not a condition inflicted or imposed upon us by someone or something else.

Suzanne Vega

He was the first person I ever saw live on stage, and I was really offended by everything he was doing,

John Bartlett

You have the right to be offended or not to be offended.

Chris Hardwick

Be offended by everything or be offended by nothing.

Ezra Taft Benson

Our enmity toward God takes on many labels, such as rebellion, hard-heartedness, stiff-neckedness, unrepentant, puffed up, easily offended, and sign seekers. The proud wish God would agree with them. They aren't interested in changing their opinions to agree with God's.

Dick Durbin

I offer my apologies to those that were offended by my words.

Charles Caleb Colton

It is astonishing how much more anxious people are to lengthen life than to improve it; and as misers often lose large sums of money in attempting to make more, so do hypochondriacs squander large sums of time in search of nostrums by which they vainly hope they may get more time to squander.

Charles Dickens

A multitude of people and yet solitude.

Charles Dickens

My faith in the people governing is, on the whole, infinitesimal; my faith in the people governed is, on the whole, illimitable.

Charles Dickens

Others had been a little wild, which was not to be wondered at, and not very blamable; but, he had made a lamentation and uproar which it was dangerous for the people to hear, as there is always contagion in weakness and selfishness.

Charles Dickens

Mrs. Boffin and me, ma'am, are plain people, and we don't want to pretend to anything, nor yet to go round and round at anything because there's always a straight way to everything.

Charles Dickens

Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and some people do the same by their religion.

Charles Dickens

I have heard it said that as we keep our birthdays when we are alive, so the ghosts of dead people, who are not easy in their graves, keep the day they died upon.

Charles Dickens

Some people are nobody's enemies but their own

Charles Soule

Superman/Wonder Woman, people expected, I guess, a lot of romance, or maybe something that wasnt emotionally deep. Who knows?

Ricky Williams

We talk about life, we talk about our philosophies. He always sends me books. It's a different kind of relationship.

Marc Shaiman

I wouldn't have been able to live with myself if someone else did it. It's a very sweet valentine to musicals, but (it) sends them up at the same time.

John Updike

Young or old, a writer sends a book into the world, not himself.

Andrew McDonald

I mean, when somebody like my grandmother sends me e-mail, I know that it's arrived,

Rachel Leon

In my experience, I would say it's rare, if not unprecedented. I think it sends a strong message.

Charles Caleb Colton

Those who have resources within themselves, who can dare to live alone, want friends the least, but, at the same time, best know how to prize them the most. But no company is far preferable to bad, because we are more apt to catch the vices of others than their virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health.

John Roberts

Trivial facts are often the best hints to what is going on.

Edith Wharton

Society soon grows used to any state of things which is imposed upon it without explanation.

Ed Koch

In a neighborhood, as in life, a clean bandage is much, much better than a raw or festering wound.

Charles Lamb

He might have proved a useful adjunct, if not an ornament to society.

Arthur Balfour

Society, dead or alive, can have no charm without intimacy and no intimacy without an interest in trifles.

J. B. Priestley

Like its politicians and its war, society has the teenagers it deserves.

Lee Hall

I don't think theatre has changed; it's society that has changed.

Boman Irani

The day we learn to allow an ambulance to pass through in traffic, might be the first step towards being a truly responsible society.

Edward Hirsch

There's been no poet, no great poet in the history of poetry who hasn't also been a great reader of poetry. This is sometimes distressing to my students when I tell them this.

Elizabeth Olsen

I've always loved being a student.

Carol Kane

It's very hard to remain a student in life.

Bob Inglis

I voted for the Deficit Reduction Package with significant heartburn over the student aid provisions.

Paul Kohn

We're going to take a look at all the qualifications that all of the students bring.

Kelly Shackelford

What they're trying to do is treat them like they're not a student club. They are a student club.

Steve Gray

Three years ago, I had 18 students, ... and this year I have 44.

Tom Callos

When the student is ready, the teacher appears. Likewise, when the teacher is ready, the students appear.

Jane Jacobs

One wonders at the docility of the students who evidently must be satisfied enough with the credentials to be uncaring about the lack of education.

Charles Caleb Colton

It has been well observed that the tongue discovers the state of the mind no less than that of the body; but in either case, before the philosopher or the physician can judge, the patient must open his mouth.

Charles Caleb Colton

There are prating coxcombs in the world who would rather talk than listen, although Shakespeare himself were the orator, and human nature the theme!

Alan Watts

People often say to me, 'I understand what you are talking about intellectually, but I don't really feel it, I don't realize it,' and I am apt to reply, 'I wonder whether you do understand it intellectually, because if you did you would also feel it.'

Alan Watts

We have somehow conned ourselves into the notion that this moment is ordinary. This now moment, in which I'm talking and you're listening, is eternity.

Alan Rickman

If you spend any time in Los Angeles, there's only one topic of conversation.

Alan Rickman

What is it about actors? God knows I get bored with actors talking about themselves.

Alan Moore

I genuinely like the people I meet at signings or the bits of public talking that I do.

Alan Greenspan

I don't know where the stock market is going, but I will say this, that if it continues higher, this will do more to stimulate the economy than anything we've been talking about today or anything anybody else was talking about.

Alain Resnais

It was repugnant, but it was the only way to communicate.