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.

David Strickland

If something is bothering you, keep it to yourself.

Louise Leakey

With the discovery of Zinjanthropus at Olduvai Gorge in 1959, my grandmother Mary Leakey pioneered the research in East Africa with my grandfather Louis. Many more spectacular fossil finds have since been made, both in Africa and elsewhere, by many researchers driven to understand our past.

Lisa Cholodenko

Wendy and I both wanted kids, but since we were pushing 40, the clock was ticking.

Maajid Nawaz

I care not to debate which came first, Islamism or anti-Muslim bigotry; suffice to say that both feed into each other symbiotically.

Mackenzie Astin

There is a healthy fraternal rivalry, but nothing serious and we both have been looking for a project to do together. I guess he may direct me in a project some day.

Richard Cohen

The other side said (there are) 799 federal and state laws mandating the use of English. ... We would say those kinds of laws are not at issue here. I think that English is the official language of this country in a practical sense already. And I think that most people who come here both learn English and want to learn English.

Ben Folds

The other reason Rufus and I are great together is that we're both really lazy. The rehearsing, the sound checks -- he's actually worse than I am, and that's something. To get us to do anything other than sit in our dressing rooms is a challenge. Who knows what will happen?

Duncan Chase

The potential is unbelievable with both those girls.

Tarun Das

The potential is huge for them both in sales and production.

Lynsey Addario

The possibility to mobilize the international community to act on human suffering is what drives me every day as a photojournalist.

David Jones

The point about labor market weakening suggests the Fed's ... worried about that. That drives home the point they're going to keep these rates unchanged for a long period of time.

Nick Woodman

Fear drives you a lot harder than success does.

Willie Nelms

We're not going to stock the latest DVD that you can get at Blockbuster. Our mission drives what we buy.

Tom Bailey

When we do these individual drives at churches, sometimes we've gotten 3,000 pounds of food.

Timothy Noah

What is the engine that drives economic growth in an ideopolis? The university.

Elizabeth Holmes

It drives me crazy when people talk about the scale as an indicator of health, because your weight doesn't tell you what's going on at a biochemical level.

Twyla Tharp

The ultimate point of a piece for me is that it drives the next one. Does it open new doors? That's the success of a piece.

Jenny Shipley

Shaping the future is what drives me. Since I left politics, I'm very much interested in emerging markets.

Aiden Wilson Tozer

Wherever the Word comes without power its essential content is missed.

Gretchen Rubin

My writing tends to become very dense, so I have to keep some cushion. Sometimes, words that seem superfluous are actually essential for the overall effect.

David Ricardo

Utility then is not the measure of exchangeable value, although it is absolutely essential to it.

David Duchovny

I just spend my money on the essentials. Just basically food and shelter.

Arnold Bennett

A sense of the value of time... is an essential preliminary to efficient work; it is the only method of avoiding hurry.

Agnes Repplier

the labors of the true critic are more essential to the author, even, than to the reader.

Edgar Rice Burroughs

For me, temperance is essential to good work.

Tom Lubin

We're providing a service that's very valuable to students, ... It's free to students and free to schools with scholarships. We're filling an essential need.

Brennan Manning

There is an essential connection between experiencing God, loving God, and trusting God. You will trust God only as much as you love him. And you will love him to the extent you have touched him, rather that he has touched you.

Charles Stross

I don't do flash fiction.

China Mieville

I'd never been to a science-fiction convention until I became a professional writer.

China Mieville

I'm a science fiction and fantasy geek.

China Mieville

One of the things that I love so much about fantasy and science fiction is that the weirdness that it creates is always at its best completely its own end and also metaphorically and symbolically laden.

David Morrell

There are no inferior types of fiction, only inferior practitioners of them.

David Mitchell

Implausible truth can serve one better than plausible fiction

Chad Harbach

Fiction and nonfiction, for me, involve very different processes.

Kurt Vonnegut

What do my science fiction stories have in common with pornography? Fantasies of an impossibly hospitable world, I'm told.

Edith Wharton

Dialogue in fiction should be reserved for the culminating moments and regarded as the spray into which the great wave of narrative breaks in curving towards the watcher on the shore.

Charles Dickens

Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with Heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us every day.

Charles Dickens

The broken heart. You think you will die, but you just keep living, day after day after terrible day.

Charles Dickens

it is a principle of his that no man who was not a true gentleman at heart, ever was, since the world began, a true gentleman in manner. He says, no varnish can hide the grain of the wood; and that the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will express itself.

Charles Dickens

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!

Charles Dickens

There are strings in the human heart that had better not be vibrated.

Charles Dickens

But, tears were not the things to find their way to Mr. Bumble's soul; his heart was waterproof.

Charles Dickens

I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart

Charles Dickens

He knew enough of the world to know that there is nothing in it better than the faithful service of the heart.

Charles Dickens

Love her, love her, love her! If she favours you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she tears your heart to pieces – and as it gets older and stronger, it will tear deeper – love her, love her, love her!

David Mitchell

I'm a novelist, that's how I make my livelihood, and I concentrate on the novels.

Beth Henley

But here's the thing: what you do as a screenwriter is you sell your copyright. As a novelist, as a poet, as a playwright, you maintain your copyright

Billy Bob Thornton

I'm more influenced by novelists than I am by filmmakers.

Dean Koontz

Not all popular novelists are good, but all good novelists are, sooner or later, popular.

Aleksandar Hemon

I resist when someone calls me a novelist: it implies some kind of inherent superiority of the novel. I'm not a novelist, I'm a writer.

A. S. Byatt

I am not an academic who happens to have written a novel. I am a novelist who happens to be quite good academically.

Kurt Vonnegut

I think I belong to America's last generation of novelists. Novelists will come one by one from now on, not in seeming families, and will perhaps write only one or two novels, and let it go at that.

Jane Smiley

A novelist is on the cusp between someone who knows everything and someone who knows nothing.

Jane Smiley

Novelists never have to footnote.

Charley Casserly

We're going to get offers for this pick. We've already had discussions with teams. I think there's value in our pick.

Joan Chen

There are only so many roles as empresses... but I've had a lot of offers to play vampires.

Wesley Ruggles

A figure with curves always offers a lot of interesting angles.

Rob Portman

I would say unless we see offers from other countries, particularly the EU, on ... reducing tariffs, we will not be able to see a successful round,

Rebel Wilson

I wrote my own play, 'The Westie Monologues,' about where I'm from in Australia, and it was very successful. From that, I started getting offers from television.

Chris Cornell

I think the concept of commercials, for example, I have had offers to do songs in different commercials, and it is not what I have liked.

Ram Dass

The gift you offer another person is just your being.

Laura Puchowicz

We already have offers on some of the units.

Paul Blake

We will get the offers (to the players) out and see what we can do.

Andi Anderson

We usually redeem ourselves in the second half. We just had to play more steady and we had a lot of turnovers.

Bryan Mullins

We stuck together. We didn't get down on ourselves or point fingers.

Ben Roethlisberger

We still see ourselves as the underdogs. We always have. If people want to pick us, they can.

Corey Claitt

We started off real slow this season, but we wanted to put ourselves back on the map.

Keith Foulke

We're not going to roll over. It's unfortunate that we've put ourselves in this situation. But we're not going to give it to them. We're going to go out there and fight, fight, fight.

Steve Sullivan

We were being embarrassed. We were being intimidated, we just sat and told ourselves that we can outplay them.

Denny Rinehart

We're going to throw ourselves right in there, headfirst, and see what we're made of right from the beginning.

Greg Kraft

We're going to find out a lot about ourselves this weekend.

Proverb Proverb

When we can't find peace in ourselves it is vain to look for it elsewhere.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I prefer you like this, when you're in a foul mood, because you tell the truth.

Luke Bracey

I'm really into the idea of telling stories. Everyone needs stories. Everyone needs to escape every once in a while.

Sandra Lee

When you're young, you think you can do anything, and that was really a gift. That's why I can never understand someone telling me 'no' today. 'No' just isn't an option.

Baltasar Gracian

It requires as much caution to tell the truth as to conceal it.

Marco Tempest

Magicians will always tell you the trick is the most important thing, but I'm more interested in telling a story.

Ted Morgan

The stammer was a way of telling the world that he was not like others, a way of expressing his singularity.

Sabrina Carpenter

Singing is about telling a story. When you are onstage, you get to be your own self... When acting, you're someone else.

Robert Barnes

What I am telling you is that Matta had a way of making you feel comfortable and that's probably why he had nine wives because he made them feel comfortable and then uncomfortable later.

Ira Glass

Any story that I can consider worth telling is one that you could tell in words.

Charles Dickens

A boy's story is the best that is ever told.

Charles Caleb Colton

Tomorrow! It is a period nowhere to be found in all the registers of time, unless, perchance, in the fool's calendar.

Charles Caleb Colton

Time is the measurer of all things, but is itself immeasurable, and the grand discloser of all things, but is itself undisclosed.

Charles Caleb Colton

Time ... advances like the slowest tide, but retreats like the swiftest torrent.

Charles Caleb Colton

Time,- that black and narrow isthmus between two eternities.

Charles Caleb Colton

To look back to antiquity is one thing, to go back to it is another.

Charles Caleb Colton

Time is the most subtle yet the most insatiable of depredators, and by appearing to take nothing is permitted to take all; nor can it be satisfied until it has stolen the world from us, and us from the world. It constantly flies, yet overcomes all things by flight; and although it is the present ally, it will be the future conqueror of death.

Charles Caleb Colton

Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away.

Charles Caleb Colton

Time, the cradle of hope.... Wisdom walks before it, opportunity with it, and repentance behind it: he that has made it his friend will have little to fear from his enemies, but he that has made it his enemy will have little to hope from his friends.

Charles Dickens

My heart is set, as firmly as ever heart of man was set on woman. I have no thought, no view, no hope, in life beyond her; and if you oppose me in this great stake, you take my peace and happiness in your hands, and cast them to the wind.

Charles Spurgeon

A high character might be produced, I suppose, by continued prosperity, but it has very seldom been the case. Adversity, however it may appear to be our foe, is our true friend; and, after a little acquaintance with it, we receive it as a precious thing - the prophecy of a coming joy. It should be no ambition of ours to traverse a path without a thorn or stone.

Alan Clark

There are no true friends in politics. We are all sharks circling, and waiting, for traces of blood to appear in the water.

David Mitchell

True knowledge without xperience is food without sustenance

Byron Katie

The WORK 1.Is it true? 2.Can you absolutely know that it's true? 3.How do you react when you think that thought? 4.Who would you be without the thought?

Carlos Ruiz Zafon

You know who your true friends are when things go wrong for you, but the opposite is also true. When things go well, the people who really love you are happy.

Charlie Bewley

I've scammed so many people throughout my whole life who never learned my true identity until I started acting.

Billy Joel

Well I never had a place that I could call my very own/That's all right, my love, 'cause you're my home.

Audrey Hepburn

True friends are families which you can select.

Charles Caleb Colton

Truth can hardly be expected to adapt herself to the crooked policy and wily sinuosities of worldly affairs; for truth, like light, travels only in straight lines.

Charles Caleb Colton

It is not so difficult a task as to plant new truths, as to root out old errors

Charles Caleb Colton

Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity, than straightforward and simple integrity in another.

Charles Caleb Colton

Theories are private property, but truth is common stock.

Alanis Morissette

I think everyone's hungry for the truth

Alan Watts

Perhaps there is no other knowing than the mere competence of the act. If at the heart of one's being, there is no self to which one ought to be true, then sincerity is simply nerve; it lies in the unabashed vigor of the pretense. But pretense is only pretense when it is assumed that the act is not true to the agent. Find the agent.

Alan Watts

Duality is always secretly unity.

Alan Arkin

Truth is always unfolding. It's not an absolute.

Al Pacino

I always tell the truth. Even when I lie.