Famous Quotes & Sayings

Charles Dickens

External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty.

Charles Dickens

Minds, like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort.

Charles Caleb Colton

He [the miser] falls down and worships the god of this world, but will have neither its pomps, its vanities nor its pleasures for his trouble.

Charles Caleb Colton

The soundest argument will produce no more conviction in an empty head than the most superficial declamation; as a feather and a guinea fall with equal velocity in a vacuum.

Charles Caleb Colton

Power. like the diamond, dazzles the beholder, and also the wearer; it dignifies meanness; it magnifies littleness; to what is contemptible, it gives authority; to what is low, exaltation. To acquire it, appears not more difficult than to be dispossessed of it when acquired, since it enables the holder to shift his own errors on dependents, and to take their merits to himself. But the miracle of losing it vanishes, when we reflect that we are as liable to fall as to rise, by the treachery of others; and that to say "I am" is language that has been appropriated exclusively to God!

Charles Caleb Colton

There is no quality of the mind, or of the body, that so instantaneously and irresistibly captivates, as wit. An elegant writer has observed that wit may do very well for a mistress, but that he should prefer reason for a wife. He that deserts the latter, and gives himself up entirely to the guidance of the former, will certainly fall into many pitfalls and quagmires, like him who walks by flashes of lightning, rather than the steady beams of the sun.

Charles Caleb Colton

Let us not be too prodigal when we are young, nor too parsimonious when we are old. Otherwise we shall fall into the common error of those, who, when they had the power to enjoy, had not the prudence to acquire; and when they had the prudence to acquire, had no longer the power to enjoy.

Charles Dickens

You fear the world too much,' she answered gently. 'All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off, one by one, until the master passion, Gain, engrosses you. Have I not?

Charles Dickens

Around and around the house the leaves fall thick, but never fast, for they come circling down with a dead lightness that is sombre and slow.

Charles Caleb Colton

Where true religion has prevented one crime, false religions have afforded a pretext for a thousand.

Alan Watts

Religion is not a department of life; it is something that enters into the whole of it.

Chief Joseph

We do not want churches. They will teach us to quarrel about God.

Carl Sagan

A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later such a religion will emerge.

Michel Onfray

Religion is a reassurance - in fact, that's its only purpose.

Edward Hoagland

It's incongruous that the older we get, the more likely we are to turn in the direction of religion. Less vivid and intense ourselves, closer to the grave, we begin to conceive of ourselves as immortal.

Edward Gibbon

Every event, or appearance, or accident, which seems to deviate from the ordinary course of nature has been rashly ascribed to the immediate action of the Deity.

Edward Gibbon

The gravest of the ecclesiastical historians, Eusebius himself, indirectly confesses that he has related whatever might redound to the glory, and that he has suppressed all that could tend to the disgrace, of religion.

Arnold J. Toynbee

The equation of religion with belief is rather recent.

Madeleine Albright

I loved what I did. I could've been secretary of state for ever.

Madeleine Albright

I loved being Secretary of State, that's probably evident to everyone who watched me.

David Hume

...interest is the barometer of the state...

Eden Sher

I live in a constant state of hyperbole.

Carol Moseley Braun

I was very productive as a senator for my state.

Sammy Sosa

I have not broken the laws of the United States or the laws of the Dominican Republic.

Susan B. Anthony

Better lose me than lose a state.

Elizabeth Bowen

writers do not find subjects: subjects find them. There is not so much a search as a state of open susceptibility.

Barack Obama

Nobody wants to put the creditworthiness of the United States in jeopardy. Nobody wants to see the United States default. So we've got to seize this moment, and we have to seize it soon.