Famous Quotes & Sayings

Charles Dickens

But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,' faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself. Business!' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The deals of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!

Charles Dickens

The ocean asks for nothing but those who stand by her shores gradually attune themselves to her rhythm.

Charles Dickens

A mob is usually a creature of very mysterious existence, particularly in a large city. Where it comes from, or whither it goes, few men can tell. Assembling and dispersing with equal suddenness, it is as difficult to follow to its various sources as the sea itself; nor does the parallel stop here, for the ocean is not more fickle and uncertain, more terrible when roused, more unreasonable or more cruel.

Charles Caleb Colton

Calumny crosses oceans, scales mountains and traverses deserts, with greater ease than the Scythian Abaris, and like him, rides upon a poisoned arrow.

Charles Caleb Colton

Idleness is the grand Pacific Ocean of life, and in that stagnant abyss the most salutary things produce no good, the most noxious no evil. Vice, indeed, abstractedly considered, may be, and often is engendered in idleness; but the moment it becomes efficiently vice, it must quit its cradle and cease to be idle.

Charles Caleb Colton

Some men of a secluded and studious life, have sent forth from their closet or their cloister, rays of intellectual light that have agitated courts, and revolutionized kingdoms; like the moon, that far removed from the ocean, and shining upon it with a serene and sober light, is the chief cause of all those ebbings and flowings which incessantly disturb that world of waters.

Charles Caleb Colton

Nobility is a river that sets with a constant and undeviating current, directly into the great Pacific Ocean of Time; but, unlike all other rivers, it is more grand at its source, than at its termination.

Charles Caleb Colton

It is better to meet danger than to wait for it. He that is on a lee shore, and foresees a hurricane, stands out to sea and encounters a storm to avoid a shipwreck.

Charles Stross

All men are islands, surrounded by the bottomless oceans of unthinking night.

Charles Caleb Colton

None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them; such persons covet secrets as a spendthrift covets money, for the purpose of circulation.

Charles Caleb Colton

Alas! What is man? Whether he be deprived of that light which is from on high, of whether he discard it, a frail and trembling creature; standing on time, that bleak and narrow isthmus between two eternities, he sees nothing but impenetrable darkness on the one hand, and doubt, distrust, and conjecture, still more perplexing, on the other. Most gladly would he take an observation, as to whence he has come, or whither he is going; alas, he has not the means: his telescope is too dim, his compass too wavering, his plummet too short.

Charles Caleb Colton

None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them.

Charles Caleb Colton

We ask advice but we mean approbation.

Charles Caleb Colton

Worldly wisdom dictates to her disciples the propriety of dressing somewhat beyond their means, but of living somewhat within them.

Charles Caleb Colton

He that dies a martyr proves that he was not a knave, but by no means that he was not a fool.

Charles Caleb Colton

It is not every man that can afford to wear a shabby coat; and worldly wisdom dictates to her disciples the propriety of dressing somewhat beyond their means, but of living somewhat within them,--for every one, sees how we dress, but none see how we live, except we choose to let them. But the truly great are, by universal suffrage, exempted from these trammels, an may live or dress as they please.

Charles Dickens

Constancy in love is a good thing; but it means nothing, and is nothing, without constancy in every kind of effort.

Charles Sturt

The main consideration with those who, possessing some capital, propose to emigrate as the means of improving their condition, is, the society likely to be found in the land fixed on for their future residence.

Charles Caleb Colton

To admit that there is any such thing as chance, in the common acceptation of the term, would be to attempt to establish a power independent of God.

Alan Watts

The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego.

Alan Moore

I've had years of bizarre hallucinogenic magical experiences in which I believed I had communicated with entities that may well have been disassociated parts of my own personality or conceivably some independent entity of a metaphysical nature. Both would seem equally interesting.

Chloe Sevigny

I couldn't survive just doing independent movies. And I'd rather do modelling than movies or TV I didn't like.

Chogyam Trungpa

The ideal of helping is to make others independent of you. You help them to become more independent rather than making them addicted to you.

Chin-Ning Chu

Success also requires the courage to risk disapproval. Most independent thought, new ideas, or endeavors beyond the common measure are greeted with disapproval, and ranging from skepticism and ridicule to violent outrage. To persevere in anything exceptional requires inner strength and the unshakable conviction that you are right.

David McCullough

Exercise free will and creative, independent thought not for the satisfactions they will bring you, but for the good they will do others, the rest of the 6.8 billion–and those who will follow them. And then you too will discover the great and curious truth of the human experience is that selflessness is the best thing you can do for yourself. The sweetest joys of life, then, come only with the recognition that you’re not special. Because everyone is.

David Guetta

So dance music is now pop music. So now, as a dance producer, what do I have to do? So I'm starting to do alien music, because pop is not pop anymore; we need to go alien to be independent.

C. Wright Mills

Any contemporary political re-statement of liberal and socialist goals must include as central the idea of a society in which all men would become men of substantive reason, whose independent reasoning would have structural consequences for their societies, its history and thus for their own life fates.