Famous Quotes & Sayings

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.

Charles Dickens

Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.

Charles Dickens

Try not to associate bodily defect with mental, my good friend, except for a solid reason

Charles Caleb Colton

Of two evils, it is perhaps less injurious to society, that good doctrine should be accompanied by a bad life, than that a good life should lend its support to a bad doctrine.

Charles Dickens

A good thing can't be cruel.

Charles Simmons

Promptitude is not only a duty, but is also a part of good manners; it is favorable to fortune, reputation, influence, and usefulness; a little attention and energy will form the habit, so as to make it easy and delightful.

Alan Moore

If you give me a typewriter and I'm having a good day, I can write a scene that will astonish its readers. That will perhaps make them laugh, perhaps make them cry - that will have some emotional clout to it. It doesn't cost much to do that.

Alan Alda

The best things said come last. People will talk for hours saying nothing much and then linger at the door with words that come with a rush from the heart.

Akira Kurosawa

A truly good movie is enjoyable too. There’s nothing complicated about it.

Brian Nicola

We want them all to go on, and realistically they all have a shot. They all want to be state-placers and they're all looking to be pretty tough. I just want them all to have a good time.

Dave Barry

We've actually gotten better musically over the years, ... But we've come to realize that we will never be good.

Nellie McKay

If you look through the century, certain things have gotten better and certain things have gotten worse. I wouldn't say overall that things have gotten better. I think you could say things have gotten worse, but I don't think you could say that things have gotten better. Overall. You can't say that.

Samantha Quigley

Yeah, it did. I thought it was going to hit the fence, so I was going so fast. Then I saw it went over and I was like, 'All right, all right.' The wind may have gotten it a bit, but I'll take it.

Rick Johnson

We're going to get serious. We've been playing around with this for too long, ... It's gotten totally out of hand.

Charlie Norwood

What we're really trying to do is level out the health care system. It has gotten so one-sided as more and more people have been put into managed care; in fact, about 70 percent of the patients in the country.

Kenneth Bonert

When I was growing up, Mandela's name was synonymous with terror. We were scared of him. You couldn't see any photos of him. A photo of him could have gotten you in jail.

Ellen Gerton

Maggie has worked really hard and her skills have gotten so much better.

Kristen Schaal

I've been lucky. The projects I've gotten to work on are projects I'd want to watch myself. That's what I try to shoot for.

Ezra Klein

People set newspapers on fire; they use them for wrapping fish. The Internet does not have that property. What I don't think we've gotten is that you can make things last longer than in print.

Charles Caleb Colton

Great men, like comets, are eccentric in their courses, and formed to do extensive good by modes unintelligible to vulgar minds.

Charles Caleb Colton

Great minds had rather deserve contemporaneous applause without obtaining it, than obtain without deserving it. If it follow them it is well, but they will not deviate to follow it.

Charles Caleb Colton

In life we shall find many men that are great, and some that are good, but very few men that are both great and good.

Charles Caleb Colton

Speaking generally, no man appears great to his contemporaries, for the same reason that no man is great to his servants--both know too much of him.

Charles Dickens

The secret was such an old one now, had so grown into me and become a part of myself, that I could not tear it away.

Charles Dickens

So new to him," she muttered, "so old to me; so strange to him, so familiar to me; so melancholy to both of us!...

Charles Dickens

But, in this separation I associate you only with the good and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you have done far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may.

Charles Dickens

Let me feel now what sharp distress I may.

Charles Simmons

True greatness consists in being great in little things.

Charles Dickens

"There is no deception now, Mr. Weller. Tears," said Job, with a look of momentary slyness, "tears are not the only proofs of distress, nor the best ones."

Charles Dickens

"I know quite enough of myself," said Bella, with a charming air of being inclined to give herself up as a bad job, "and I don't improve upon acquaintance..."

Charles Stross

I wanted an agent who would actually sell stuff. After two British agents failed comprehensively, I was reading Locus (the SF field's trade journal) and noticed a press release about an experienced editor leaving her job to join an agent in setting up a new agency. And I went "aha!" - because what you need is an agent who knows the industry but who doesn't have a huge list of famous clients whose needs will inevitably be put ahead of you. So I emailed her, and ... well, 11 years later I am the client listed at the top of her masthead!

Charles Stross

What I read: while I'm writing, I tend to go off reading fiction for relaxation - especially the challenging stuff. It's too much like the day job.

Alan Watts

It's time to question a job or career move when it seems like most energy is devoted to making things appear other than what they really are.

Alan Parker

Film-making is a physically hard job.

Alan Patricof

I got my first job the old-fashioned way: I took an elevator to the top floor of many buildings and walked down floor by floor on the stairs going into every firm and asking the receptionist if she knew of any jobs available.

Alan Rickman

One thing I will say - my job gets harder and harder. The more you understand about what you are capable of, the less the instrument can do it physically. It's an inverse equation, if that's the right phrase. I just slammed those two words together. It sounded right.

Alan Rickman

I have a photograph at home of Fred Astaire from the knees down with his feet crossed. It's kind of inspiring because it reminds me his feet were bleeding at the end of rehearsals. Yet when you watch him, all you see is freedom. It's a reminder of what the job is about in general, not just being in musicals.

David Mitchell

Who was blowing on the nape of my neck.

Charles Krauthammer

Better to be paralyzed from the neck down than the neck up

Djuna Barnes

After all, it is not where one washes one's neck that counts but where one moistens one's throat.

Kieran Culkin

They put me in a whole body suit, from my neck to my ankles. It was so bad, I couldn't straighten my legs.

Kate Winslet

When I was heavy, people would say to me - and it was such a backhanded compliment - they would say, 'You've got such a beautiful face,' in the way of, like, 'Oh, isn't it a shame that from the neck down you're questionable.'

Eli Wallach

Having the critics praise you is like having the hangman say you've got a pretty neck.

Austin O'Malley

A hole is nothing at all, but you can break your neck in it.

Dennis Cuneo

She really stuck her neck out for us politically, and we appreciated it.

Nina Garcia

I tend to wear leather pants with crew neck sweaters or leather jackets with denim.

Camille Paglia

We must take the best from the left and the best from the right to devise new strategies for the global twenty-first century. The reluctance of liberal professors to speak out against rampant abuses committed on their side (e.g., suppression of free speech, the excesses of women's studies and French theory) has simply increased the power of the right.

Irish Sayings

Where the tongue slips, it speaks the truth

Bev Perdue

I've always been me. I've always been very direct and have told the truth and have been very willing to stand up and speak out.

August Strindberg

When people refuse to speak out for too long, it's like water that's stagnant and starts to rot!

Dennis Kucinich

And my approach has always been to stand up and speak out on behalf of the economic rights of people.

Chanakya

The foolish wish to speak out what was spoken in secret by the master.

Chaka Khan

It's time for those of us who have a voice to speak out for life, for love and for justice using the same media we've used throughout our careers.

Ban Ki-moon

I am not a national leader. If I am a national leader I can speak out all that I want.

Arianna Huffington

Failure is not the opposite to success, it's a stepping stone to success. If our primary goal is to be approved of, then we are not going to take risks, we are not going to speak out, we are going to try to blend in.

Casey Affleck

After I left LA... it was like waking up. And so I moved back east and stopped auditioning.

Audre Lorde

We must wake up knowing we have work to do and go to bed knowing we've done it.

Maggie Q

You're asked, 'Do you know kung-fu?' Yeah. That's what we do. We wake up, we brush our teeth, we do kung-fu!

Austin Carlile

Wake up and create a purpose for yourself. Don't ask the meaning of life, ask yourself the meaning of each given day.

Tyra Banks

I don't wake up with naturally sculpted cheekbones - I paint them on!

Bailee Madison

I wake up to an email from the writers with the new script, and I always get so excited because I know it'll be better all-around than the script from the week before.

Paul Begala

no one will wake up Nov. 8 and not know what they were getting.

Conan O'Brien

Tomorrow is Election Day. That's the day we Americans wake up, consider our options, and then remember we didn't register to vote.

Andrew Rannells

I can't wake up at all without caffeine.