Famous Quotes & Sayings

Charles Dickens

It is not easy to walk alone in the country without musing upon something.

Charles Caleb Colton

In all countries where nature does the most, man does the least.

Charles Caleb Colton

Those who visit foreign nations, but associate only with their own country-men, change their climate, but not their customs. They see new meridians, but the same men; and with heads as empty as their pockets, return home with traveled bodies, but untravelled minds.

Charles Caleb Colton

In great cities men are more callous both to the happiness and the misery of others, than in the country; for they are constantly in the habit of seeing both extremes.

Charles Caleb Colton

As the grand discordant harmony of the celestial bodies may be explained by the simple principles of gravity and impulse, so also in that more wonderful and complicated microcosm, the heart of man, all the phenomena of morals are perhaps resolvable into one single principle, the pursuit of apparent good; for although customs universally vary, yet man in all climates and countries is essentially the same.

Charles Caleb Colton

The most notorious swindler has not assumed so many names as self-love, nor is so much ashamed of his own. She calls herself patriotism, when at the same time she is rejoicing at just as much calamity to her native country as will introduce herself into power, and expel her rivals.

Charles Dickens

Old Marley was as dead as a doornail. Mind! I don't mean to say that, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a doornail.

Charles Dickens

If its individual citizens, to a man, are to be believed, it always is depressed, and always is stagnated, and always is at an alarming crisis, and never was otherwise; though as a body, they are ready to make oath upon the Evangelists, at any hour of the day or night, that it is the most thriving and prosperous of all countries on the habitable globe.

Charles Dickens

Rattle me out of bed early, set me going, give me as short a time as you like to bolt my meals in, and keep me at it. Keep me always at it, and I'll keep you always at it, you keep somebody else always at it. There you are with the Whole Duty of Man in a commercial country.

Charles Dickens

It was a good thing to have a couple of thousand people all rigid and frozen together, in the palm of one's hand.

Charles Dickens

I am a neat hand at cookery, and I'll tell you what I knocked up for my Christmas-eve dinner in the Library Cart. I knocked up a beefsteak-pudding for one, with two kidneys, a dozen oysters, and a couple of mushrooms thrown in. It's a pudding to put a man in good humour with everything, except the two bottom buttons of his waistcoat.

Charles Stross

I don't want to permanently damage myself! On the other hand, a couple of days off the keyboard tends to make things somewhat better.

Charles Stross

I'm told that a couple of my Russian translations are just plain terrible, though, and there may be others.

Alanis Morissette

Over the last couple of years, I've really worked toward balancing my life out more, having a little bit more time with friends, family and my boyfriend. There was a period of time when they were way down the list. It was all about music and touring and if everything fell by the wayside, so be it.

Alan Moore

I increasingly fear that nothing good can come of almost any adaptation, and obviously that's sweeping. There are a couple of adaptations that are perhaps as good or better than the original work. But the vast majority of them are pointless.

Alan Arkin

I played guitar. I've always considered myself an actor, but I wasn't making a living as an actor. So I was in a couple of folk groups that managed to keep me in underwear and burritos.

Alan Ball

There are times when I am directing, and there are a couple of moments I didn't get the way I wanted, but I know I still have other angles to shoot and I have to be done by noon; I move on.

Al Michaels

I still believe Emmitt has enough left in the tank to be a productive back over the next couple of seasons.

Donald Rumsfeld

We're not going to rule out anything, but we don't have any plans at the present time to use U.S. forces in that way,

Georgie Fame

When I was a kid,if you were lucky, you listened to that music on Radio Luxembourg or the American Forces Network.

Richard P. Feynman

Investigating the forces that hold the nuclear particles together was a long task.

Kathleen Sebelius

I know how tough it is to stand up to powerful forces that prey on consumers.

Eric Long

When you put yourself in the position to have to come back like that it forces your hand. You have to make every play and you can't make a mistake. But the story of this game was told in the first four minutes.

Patty Schnyder

She puts huge pressure on me. She is so present on the court. She really forces you back. It's tough to get the rallies going and move her around.

R. Ingram

What I can say is that U.S. forces helped to provide urgent medical support at the scene of the incident, something for which I know our forces are grateful,

Yosef Lapid

Security forces must respond with strength to the terrible attack.

Gore Vidal

If you are a Representative and want to be a Senator, you must be careful not to do anything which might upset the various forces you need to harness to get elected.

Alan Paton

It is not permissible for us to go on destroying the family life when we know that we are destroying it.

Alan Moore

Here's the thing: If you're monitoring every single thing that goes on in a given culture, if you have all the information that is there to be had, then that is the equivalent of having none of it. How are you going to process that amount of information?

Aiden Wilson Tozer

When the Holy Spirit is in full control of our lives, He will expect our obedience to the written Word of God. But it is part of our human problem that we would like to be full of the Spirit and yet go on and do as we please!

John Tortorella

We've won one game, that is it. I think what we did is just turn this into a series. ... As the series goes on, you have to play better. We know Ottawa is going to play better the third game.

John M. Ford

The people who don't like it tend to dislike it intensely. That's unfortunate, but not surprising when one deliberately goes against audience expectations.

Jack Horner

where it actually goes from land into the water.

McKayla Maroney

When you're competing, you have to wear a sleeve that goes all the way down to your wrist. When you're training, you usually don't wear long-sleeved leotards, so there's a difference between training and competing.

Nigel Barker

My go-to necktie is jet black, skinny, and simple. It goes with everything. I really like that mod-ish punk look.

Mel Rapozo

When you talk to the officers, it's pretty bad. Every day that goes by without some intervention, it's getting worse.

Charles Caleb Colton

He who knows himself knows others.

Charles Dickens

I only know that it was, and ceased to be; and that I have written, and there I leave it.

China Chow

I'm so private and I don't know why!

David Mitchell

We are only what we know, and I wished to be so much more than I was, sorely.

David Murphy

You will never know your limitations until you find them.

Byron Katie

Ultimately, I am all I can know.

Jane Austen

Know your own happiness.

Scott Ishikawa

When you talk to the crews, everybody's tired, but at the same time everyone knows they rely on us to keep the roads open. I think we're doing our best. We're just going to keep trying.

Bill Joy

I was surprised about vi going in, though, I didn't know it was in System V.

Charles Dickens

Remember, to the last, that while there is life there is hope.

Charles Simmons

Ridicule is the first and last argument of a fool.

Alan Rickman

I have just returned from the dubbing studio where I spoke into a microphone as Severus Snape for absolutely the last time.

Eric DiBiase

We've won nine of the last 11, so I like our chances.

Andrew Palmer

We want to show that we're no joke. People thought last year was a fluke. We can make improvements from last year. We're ready to see what's out there.

David Mitchell

We looked at each other for the last time; nothing is as eloquent as nothing.

David Sanborn

You're only as good as your last record.

Camille Paglia

The last western society to worship female powers was Minoan Crete. And significantly, that fell and did not rise again.

Bryan Lee O'Malley

I need some kind of... like... last minute, poorly-set-up deus ex machina!!

Alan Alda

I've never tried to manipulate my image.

C. Northcote Parkinson

The smaller the function, the greater the management.

Brian Trehearne

The poetry was the man, the man was the poetry.

Benjamin Netanyahu

I'm not naturally manipulative.

David Hume

What would become of history, had we not a dependence on the veracity of the historian, according to the experience, what we have had of mankind?

Arne Glimcher

I've been told I'm a good midcareer manager.

Edward Everett

Ever the characteristic manners of cowardice.

Ed Koch

Whenever I leave Manhattan, I get the bends!

Edward Kennedy

Shamefully we now learn that Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management, U.S. management.

Alan Watts

It is a special kind of enlightenment to have this feeling that the usual, the way things normally are, is odduncanny and highly improbable. G.K.Chesterton once said that it is one thing to be amazed at gorgon or a griffin, creatures which do not exist; but it is quite another and much higher thing to be amazed at a rhinoceros or a giraffe, creatures which do exist and look as if they don't. This feeling of universal oddity includes a basic and intense wondering about the sense of things.

Kurt Vonnegut

I'm odd, I know,' he said. 'It's fear of myself that's made me odd.

Charles Krauthammer

Consider the oddity of those drug commercials on television. Fifteen seconds of the purported therapeutic effort, followed by about 45 seconds of a rapidly muttered list of horrific possible side effects. When the ad is over, I can't remember a thing about what the pill is supposed to do, except perhaps cause nausea, liver damage, projectile vomiting, a nasty rash, a four-hour erection, and sudden death. Sudden death is my favorite because there is something comical about it being a side effect. What exactly is the main effect in that case? Relief from abdominal bloating?

Bill Nighy

I'm always happy when actors get rich, because the odds on it are so long!

Charlie Munger

I won’t bet $100 against house odds between now and the grave.

Ricky Gervais

I've probably done the odd thing. I've probably done more than I would have done and some things you don't say no to. You don't say no to working with "The Simpsons"... the greatest comedy show on television. You mustn't. Even though going to my bad judgment, I remember saying that all I can do is make this show slightly worse.

Bode Miller

Ski racers are built odd with overbuilt butts and legs.

Bruce Feiler

The bottom line: if you want a happier family, create, refine and retell the story of your family's positive moments and your ability to bounce back from the difficult ones. That act alone may increase the odds that your family will thrive for many generations to come.

Dean Young

Poetry is not efficient. If you want to learn how to cook a lobster, it’s probably best not to look to poetry. But if you want to see the word lobster in all its reactant oddity, its pied beauty, as if for the first time, go to poetry. And if you want to know what it’s like to be that lobster in the pot, that’s in poetry too.

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.

Alan Moore

Now everything is wonderful and hazardous and nothing's hypothetical.

Alan Alda

I'm in this wonderful position where I can do what interests me. And whatever comes along that interests me, I do. The rest of the time I bother scientists about communicating.

E. B. White

We've won here now so we don't have to worry about the 15-year thing.

Bryce Courtenay

Each of us has been designed for one of two immortal functions, as either a storyteller or as a cross-legged listener to tales of wonder, love, and daring. When we cease to tell or listen, then we no longer exist as a people.

Catherynne M. Valente

And it's the wonders I'm after, even if I have to bleed for them.

Casey Stengel

It's wonderful to meet so many friends that I didn't used to like.

Jeff Murphy

We started off very slow. We had to refocus and get back to the things that won the first set for us.

Astrid Lindgren

Don't let them get you down. Be cheeky. And wild. And wonderful.

Bill Nye

When or if answers are found, you can be assured those answers will lead to more questions. Is the troubling or wonderful? It depends on your view of your place in nature, your place among the stars; I suppose.