Famous Quotes & Sayings

Charles Dickens

External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty.

Charles Dickens

Minds, like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort.

Charles Caleb Colton

He [the miser] falls down and worships the god of this world, but will have neither its pomps, its vanities nor its pleasures for his trouble.

Charles Caleb Colton

The soundest argument will produce no more conviction in an empty head than the most superficial declamation; as a feather and a guinea fall with equal velocity in a vacuum.

Charles Caleb Colton

Power. like the diamond, dazzles the beholder, and also the wearer; it dignifies meanness; it magnifies littleness; to what is contemptible, it gives authority; to what is low, exaltation. To acquire it, appears not more difficult than to be dispossessed of it when acquired, since it enables the holder to shift his own errors on dependents, and to take their merits to himself. But the miracle of losing it vanishes, when we reflect that we are as liable to fall as to rise, by the treachery of others; and that to say "I am" is language that has been appropriated exclusively to God!

Charles Caleb Colton

There is no quality of the mind, or of the body, that so instantaneously and irresistibly captivates, as wit. An elegant writer has observed that wit may do very well for a mistress, but that he should prefer reason for a wife. He that deserts the latter, and gives himself up entirely to the guidance of the former, will certainly fall into many pitfalls and quagmires, like him who walks by flashes of lightning, rather than the steady beams of the sun.

Charles Caleb Colton

Let us not be too prodigal when we are young, nor too parsimonious when we are old. Otherwise we shall fall into the common error of those, who, when they had the power to enjoy, had not the prudence to acquire; and when they had the prudence to acquire, had no longer the power to enjoy.

Charles Dickens

You fear the world too much,' she answered gently. 'All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off, one by one, until the master passion, Gain, engrosses you. Have I not?

Charles Dickens

Around and around the house the leaves fall thick, but never fast, for they come circling down with a dead lightness that is sombre and slow.

David McCullough

History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.

David McCullough

No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read.

C. Wright Mills

History is the shank of the social sciences.

Cesare Pavese

For women, history does not exist. Murasaki, Sappho, and Madame Lafayette might be their own contemporaries.

Cary Grant

Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.

E. Hicks

When you think about it, history is made to be broken. That's the way we look at it.

Kurt Vonnegut

History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again.

Kurt Vonnegut

History! Read it and weep!

Edward Gibbon

But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous.

J. C. Watts

I thought he was a superman. I know the kids saw him as an invincible dad. To see this, it tears them apart.

Curtis Sliwa

Hey, I was lucky twice. I know it's three strikes and you're out. I don't think of myself as being invincible anymore.

John Piper

The presence of hope in the invincible sovereignty of God drives out fear.

Mariano Rivera

I don't feel invincible because I'm human.

Lance Loud

I believed I was invincible.

Charles Dickens

I don't remember who was there, except Dora. I have not the least idea what we had for dinner, besides Dora. My impression is, that I dined off Dora, entirely, and sent away half-a-dozen plates untouched. I sat next to her. I talked to her. She had the most delightful little voice, the gayest little laugh, the pleasantest and most fascinating little ways, that ever led a lost youth into hopeless slavery. She was rather diminutive altogether. So much the more precious, I thought.

Charles Dickens

There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.

Charles Dickens

Never close your lips to those whom you have already opened your heart.

Charles Dickens

Mystery and disappointment are not absolutely indispensable to the growth of love, but they are, very often, its powerful auxiliaries.

Charles Dickens

To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart.

Charles Dickens

You know what I am going to say. I love you. What other men may mean when they use that expression, I cannot tell. What I mean is that I am under the influence of some tremendous attraction which I have resisted in vain, and which overmasters me. You could draw me to fire, you could draw me to water, you could draw me to the gallows, you could draw me to any death, you could draw me to anything I have most avoided, you could draw me to any exposure and disgrace. This and the confusion of my thoughts, so that I am fit for nothing, is what I mean by your being the ruin of me.

Charles Dickens

What lawsuits grow out of the graves of rich men, every day; sowing perjury, hatred, and lies among near kindred, where there should be nothing but love!

Charles Dickens

I loved you madly; in the distasteful work of the day, in the wakeful misery of the night, girded by sordid realities, or wandering through Paradises and Hells of visions into which I rushed, carrying your image in my arms, I loved you madly.

Charles Dickens

I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.

Charles Spurgeon

How gentle and tender ought we to be with others who are foolish when we remember how foolish we are ourselves

Charles Spurgeon

Unerring wisdom ordained your lot, and selected for you the safest and best condition. Remember this, had any other condition been better for you than the one in which you are, divine love would have put you there. You are placed by God in the most suitable circumstances. Be content with such things as you have, since the Lord has ordered all things for your good.

Charles Spurgeon

Remember this, had any other condition been better for you than the one in which you are, divine love would have put you there.

Alan Bennett

Remember. You are a physician. You are not a policeman nor are you a minister of religion. You must take people as they come. Remember, too that though you will generally know more about the condition than the patient, it is the patient who has the condition and this if nothing else bestows on him or her a kind of wisdom. You have the knowledge but that does not entitle you to be superior. Knowledge makes you the servant not the master.

Al Jourgensen

If you remember the ‘90s, you weren’t there.

Cesare Pavese

You dont remember days, you remember moments

Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I've always thought that we are what we remember, and the less we remember, the less we are.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Remember me, even if it's only in a corner and secretly. Don't let me go.

Cal Thomas

Not to remember 9/11, is to forget what brought it about.

Carolina Herrera

Work doesn't seem to interfere with my life. I have time for everything, even time to be alone.

John Sacchi

We're in a situation where we just can't stop the bleeding. We keep trying to put band-aids on the wound, but nothing seems to help.

Jim Rash

When you stop thinking about something, the idea comes to you. It seems to work.

Nicole Piggott

We're going to do what we've been doing all year. It seems to be working fine.

Arthur Conan Doyle

Anything seems commonplace, once explained.

Larry Mikesell

We're getting better. We just can't seem to get over the hump.

Ken Bruen

We haven't had crime writers, and for a long time in the Republic, we didn't seem to have a crime problem as such.

Todd Blackadder

Ulster seemed to get their tries effortlessly whereas we had to work for ours.

Kate Grenville

I do feel as if... Look, I think I'm a very kind of ordinary person, and it seems to me that things that are of interest to me will probably be of interest to other people. I'm not exceptional; I don't have exceptional thoughts.

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

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.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The educated ones leave, the ones with the potential to right the wrongs. They leave the weak behind. The tyrants continue to reign because the weak cannot resist. Do you not see that it is a cycle? Who will break that cycle?

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The tyrant should take heed to what he doth, Since every victim-carrion turns to use, And drives a chariot, like a god made wroth, Against each piled injustice.

Benjamin Franklin

Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God.

Will Durant

Today's rebel is tomorrow's tyrant.

Alexis de Tocqueville

The will of the nation is one of those phrases most widely abused by schemers and tyrants of all ages.

Juvenal

What is more cruel than a tyrant's ear?

Juvenal

Few tyrants go down to the infernal regions by a natural death.

Dennis Prager

More harm was done in the 20th century by faceless bureaucrats than tyrant dictators.

Demosthenes

Excessive dealings with tyrants are not good for the security of free states.