Famous Quotes & Sayings

Charles Caleb Colton

If once a woman breaks through the barriers of decency, her ease is desperate; and if she goes greater lengths than the men, and leaves the pale of propriety farther behind her, it is because she is aware that all return is prohibited, and by none so strongly as by her own sex.

Charles Caleb Colton

Miss Edgeworth and Mme. de Stael have proved that there is no sex in style; and Mme. la Roche Jacqueline, and the Duchesse d'Angouleme have proved that there is no sex in courage.

Charles Caleb Colton

No improvement that takes place in either sex can possibly be confined to itself. Each is a universal mirror to each, and the respective refinement of the one will always be in reciprocal proportion to the polish of the other.

Charles Caleb Colton

Some philosophers would give a sex to revenge, and appropriate it almost exclusively to the female mind. But, like most other vices, it is of both genders; yet, because wounded vanity and slighted love are the two most powerful excitements to revenge, it has been thought, perhaps, to rage with more violence in the female heart.

Charles Caleb Colton

There is more jealousy between rival wits than rival beauties, for vanity has no sex. But in both cases there must be pretensions, or there will be no jealousy.

Charles Dickens

He was the meekest of his sex, the mildest of little men. He sidled in and out of a room, to take up the less space. He walked as softly as the Ghost in Hamlet, and more slowly. He carried his head on one side, partly in modest depreciation of himself, partly in modest propitiation of everybody else.

Alanis Morissette

No-strings relationships have helped cure me of love addiction. All my life I've been in long-term monogamous relationships. I had to break that pattern by not allowing myself to have a relationship for a year, stopping myself from committing to men. I haven't been celibate. I've had lots of dates and lots of sex, but I haven't been pushing to turn a date into a relationship. This has been a huge thing for me.

Alan Watts

The world is filled with love-play, from animal lust to sublime compassion.

Alan Watts

Sex is no longer a serious taboo. Teenagers sometimes know more about it than adults.

Charles Dickens

Ask no questions, and you'll be told no lies.

Charles Caleb Colton

Falsehood is often rocked by truth, but she soon outgrows her cradle and discards her nurse.

Charles Caleb Colton

Pride is less ashamed of being ignorant, than of being instructed, and she looks too high to find that, which very often lies beneath her.

Charles Caleb Colton

Ignorance lies at the bottom of all human knowledge, and the deeper we penetrate the nearer we arrive unto it. For what do we truly know, or what can we clearly affirm, of any one of those important things upon which all our reasonings must of necessity be built--time and space, life and death, matter and mind?

Charles Caleb Colton

Men of great and shining qualities do not always succeed in life, but the fault lies more often in themselves than in others.

Charles Dickens

The persons on whom I have bestowed my dearest love lie deep in their graves; but, although the happiness and delight of my life lie buried there too, I have not made a coffin of my heart, and sealed it up for ever on my best affections. Deep affliction has only made them stronger; it ought, I think, for it should refine our nature.

Charles Dickens

I mean a man whose hopes and aims may sometimes lie (as most men's sometimes do, I dare say) above the ordinary level, but to whom the ordinary level will be high enough after all if it should prove to be a way of usefulness and good service leading to no other. All generous spirits are ambitious, I suppose, but the ambition that calmly trusts itself to such a road, instead of spasmodically trying to fly over it, is of the kind I care for.

Charles Dickens

The boy was lying, fast asleep, on a rude bed upon the floor; so pale with anxiety, and sadness, and the closeness of his prison, that he looked like death; not death as it shews in shroud and coffin, but in the guise it wears when life has just departed; when a young and gentle spirit has, but an instant, fled to Heaven: and the gross air of the world has not had time to breathe upon the changing dust it hallowed.

Charles Dickens

Can I view thee panting, lying On thy stomach, without sighing; Can I unmoved see thee dying On a log Expiring frog!

Charles Dickens

There are many pleasant fictions of the law in constant operation, but there is not one so pleasant or practically humorous as that which supposes every man to be of equal value in its impartial eye, and the benefits of all laws to be equally attainable by all men, without the smallest reference to the furniture of their pockets.

David Sedaris

Everyone looks retarded once you set your mind to it.

Dave Barry

England manufactures most of the world's airline food, as well as all the food you ever ate in your junior-high-school cafeteria.

Dave Barry

English history consists largely of royal people getting their heads chopped off...Needless to say, this brand of history was a hit with our son.

Dave Barry

The basic Roman ruin design is a pile of rocks with a little plaque saying "Roman Ruins" and a group of tourists frowning at it and wishing they were back at the hotel bar..

Dave Barry

The Romans spent the next 200 years using their great engineering skill to construct ruins all over Europe.

Dave Barry

One key lesson of history is that virtually anything, including afternoon or evening thundershowers, causes Germany to invade Belgium.

Dave Barry

Nevada has a very dynamic economy, with gambling being the number-one industry, followed closely by blood donorship.

Dave Barry

Europeans, like some Americans, drive on the right side of the road, except in England, where they drive on both sides of the road; Italy, where they drive on the sidewalk; and France, where if necessary they will follow you right into the hotel lobby.