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

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.

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 nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.

Charles Dickens

Life is made of ever so many partings welded together.

Charles Dickens

This is a world of action, and not moping and droning in.

Charles Dickens

Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.

Charles Dickens

Do all the good you can and make as little fuss about it as possible.

Charles Caleb Colton

It is astonishing how much more people are interested in lengthening life than improving it.

Charles Caleb Colton

Life is the jailer of the soul in this filthy prison, and its only deliverer is death.

Charles Caleb Colton

Much too oft we make life gloomy-- When happy we might be, If we gathered more of sunshine, And not dark shadows see.

Charles Caleb Colton

Evils in the journey of life are like the hills which alarm travelers upon their road; they both appear great at a distance, but when we approach them we find that they are far less insurmountable than we had conceived.

Lisa Graff

I was the typical little sister who wanted to be just like her older brother. When I was growing up, my brother wrote phenomenal stories, so I wanted to write them, too.

Jane Fonda

When you're an older woman [in a movie], you are the brunt of the joke.

Richard Sloan

Many studies, especially some of the older ones, have significant methodological flaws, which render the conclusions questionable.

Bill Jones

We did not have many seniors, so most of our team is returning. We're a year older and we should be bigger, stronger and faster.

Keith Richard

Getting old is a fascinating thing. The older you get, the older you want to get.

Joss Whedon

I had older brothers, and I don't think there's anything worse than an older brother. They pretty much told me the end of everything they got to see before I did.

Trey Aby

We'll still play some of the older teams. But with what we did this year, some things are going to change.

Corey Clark

Older women have always been attracted to me.

Ken Young

I was a little angry. We didn't talk for a while. But I'm older now. I realized that I was too sensitive.

Etta James

Most of the songs I sing, they have that blue feeling to it. They have that sorry feeling. And I don't know what I'm sorry about.

Todd Rundgren

I don't know what the inspiration for most of songs really mean until I finish them. For the most part, I'm going for a visceral impression, and I write the words last.

Neil Innes

But mostly, I wrote songs and Viv wrote songs.

Anna Chlumsky

There are songs where no matter how much you know you shouldn't - like the Ying Yang Twins' 'Shake' - I'll be in a dress, and I'll krump to it. It's horrible!

Gene Ween

I wrote most of these songs right before the end. A lot of these songs are about that. Even if it's not direct, you can feel the beginning of the end of the breakup in these songs.

Valerie June

I just let the songs tell me what to do - they are my guides, and they are the boss. So I am subservient to the songs, and I let them tell me what to do. I don't judge them; I just write whatever comes to me.

Kate Micucci

My first songs were about animals and shoes. I wrote one song about PF Flyers, and one to my fish.

Lucinda Williams

My approach to recording and all that is pretty organic. It just has to do with all the songs I wrote; go in and record them.

Bob Weir

Songs go through cycles for me. And sometimes I lose my passion for some of them.

Al Leiter

I like starting. It's pretty cool.

Bryan Ferry

It must be really hard to be starting out in music now.

German Proverb

When you sweep the stairs, you start at the top

David Seiders

When you start to see cancellations, you really get worried.

George White

When you start to know what you're doing and why you're doing it, it makes it better.

Grady Fuson

When you start talking about prospects, it's a very subjective term. The way I look at it is as long as you've got a uniform on, you've got a chance.

Kurt Vonnegut

We'd all do well to start over again, preferably with kindergarten.

Billy Dee Williams

Originally I planned on starting a teapot collection. I really like them.

August Wilson

I ain't never found no place for me to fit. Seem like all I do is start over. It ain't nothing to find no starting place in the world. You just start from where you find yourself.

Dick Cavett

The sudden death at 51 of James Gandolfini is intolerable.

Donita Stewart

She is very independent, and suddenly she couldn't do the things that she's always done.

Mark Woodhead

(Miller) just hoisted us up. Defensively, she got about three picks. We were down two at half, and all of a sudden we're up by five, that was critical.

Feist

When I wrote 'Mushaboom', I was living in the second verse, but I suddenly found myself in the first.

Nicole Ari Parker

I have one little pooch-y stomach in a picture, and all of a sudden I'm pregnant.

Charles Nelson Reilly

I was 24 yesterday. Suddenly you wake up, and you get on the elevator, and there's a mirror there. And you look in the mirror, and you're an old man.

Harry Hamlin

In those days I was mortified, because I was a serious actor in my own mind, and then all of a sudden I'm this hunk.

Gillian Armstrong

It only happens once - that an actor is suddenly recognised as the star they are.

Elizabeth Warren

I was 30 before I realized, you know, that I probably was an accident. These things just suddenly hit you one day.

Charles Caleb Colton

It has been well observed that the tongue discovers the state of the mind no less than that of the body; but in either case, before the philosopher or the physician can judge, the patient must open his mouth.

Charles Caleb Colton

There are prating coxcombs in the world who would rather talk than listen, although Shakespeare himself were the orator, and human nature the theme!

Alan Watts

People often say to me, 'I understand what you are talking about intellectually, but I don't really feel it, I don't realize it,' and I am apt to reply, 'I wonder whether you do understand it intellectually, because if you did you would also feel it.'

Alan Watts

We have somehow conned ourselves into the notion that this moment is ordinary. This now moment, in which I'm talking and you're listening, is eternity.

Alan Rickman

If you spend any time in Los Angeles, there's only one topic of conversation.

Alan Rickman

What is it about actors? God knows I get bored with actors talking about themselves.

Alan Moore

I genuinely like the people I meet at signings or the bits of public talking that I do.

Alan Greenspan

I don't know where the stock market is going, but I will say this, that if it continues higher, this will do more to stimulate the economy than anything we've been talking about today or anything anybody else was talking about.

Alain Resnais

It was repugnant, but it was the only way to communicate.

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 Caleb Colton

It is with disease of the mind, as with those of the body; we are half dead before we understand our disorder, and half cured when we do.

Alan Moore

As I come to understand Vietnam and what it implies about the human condition, I also realize that few humans will permit themselves such an understanding.

Chinua Achebe

If you only hear one side of the story, you have no understanding at all.

David Shuster

There are a lot of folks at Fox News who bring a certain level of sophistication to their understanding of politics.

David Sedaris

This was the consequence of seeing too much and understanding the horrible truth: No one is safe. The world is not manageable.

David Sedaris

I'd always thought that I understood this, but lately I realize that what I call "understanding" is basically just fantasizing.

David Koechner

What helps you as an actor when it comes to roles is that deeper understanding of so many different fractions of humanity. Because oftentimes, even in comedy, there is conflict.

Carl Sagan

Understanding is a kind of ecstasy

Carl Sagan

The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence of the Cosmos.

Charles Caleb Colton

It is with disease of the mind, as with those of the body; we are half dead before we understand our disorder, and half cured when we do.

Alan Moore

As I come to understand Vietnam and what it implies about the human condition, I also realize that few humans will permit themselves such an understanding.

Chinua Achebe

If you only hear one side of the story, you have no understanding at all.

David Shuster

There are a lot of folks at Fox News who bring a certain level of sophistication to their understanding of politics.

David Sedaris

This was the consequence of seeing too much and understanding the horrible truth: No one is safe. The world is not manageable.

David Sedaris

I'd always thought that I understood this, but lately I realize that what I call "understanding" is basically just fantasizing.

David Koechner

What helps you as an actor when it comes to roles is that deeper understanding of so many different fractions of humanity. Because oftentimes, even in comedy, there is conflict.

Carl Sagan

Understanding is a kind of ecstasy

Carl Sagan

The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence of the Cosmos.