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.

Said Musa

Let us work toward greater cooperation with all Caribbean Countries, whether we speak English, Dutch, French or Spanish, whether we are independent or not, and whether we be island or continental territories.

Charles Rangel

Many of the undocumented immigrants from the Caribbean islands have been living, working and making vital contributions to our country for many years.

Brandon Jay McLaren

When I wrapped 'Falling Skies,' I took a trip to the Caribbean to visit my grandma, which is great. I was out there for two weeks in Grenada. Then after that, I went to Poland for two and a half weeks to go watch some of the European soccer championships.

Elliott Abrams

The war on drugs is not being won, and it continues to threaten stability and democracy not only in the Andes but throughout the Caribbean as well, where tiny police and military forces are outclassed by the sophisticated equipment in the hands of traffickers passing through the region on the way to their market in this country.

Steven Thompson

One of our concerns about playing in the southern Caribbean is the quality of the playing surface. However, I have played at that stadium before and at that time the surface was exceptional. At the end of the day our focus has to be on what we do between the white lines on game day.

Tom Greene

There are, perhaps, two separate current lines, or a small temperature change of a half-degree. And we're still getting debris out of the Caribbean from the hurricanes.

Steve Loucks

There are more ships floating around the Caribbean than any other place in the world.

Peter Piot

Now we have Kenya, several of the Caribbean countries and Zimbabwe with a decline.

Richard Kaplan

I have connected with the Caribbean community, but I would like to think that I've connected with all other communities in this city.

Louis Navellier

One of the things that launched the strength in biotech is when the pharmaceutical industry itself got a little slow.

Louis Sachar

With 'Holes' I was troubled that there weren't very many female characters. I tried to put them in where I could. But the setting didn't lend itself to girls.

Jeff Justice

The outcome itself shows it was an unreasonable risk.

Stephen Graham Jones

Where 'Paranormal Activity' really comes into its own is its rhetoric of legitimacy - how it uses itself to authenticate itself, and thus furthers the pretence of being real.

Matt Rosoff

What's left under MSN -- MSNBC? Microsoft just divested itself of that, too.

Pete Smith

The plan itself is still being drafted. We're working with HUD on rules and regulations.

Robert Redford

There is nothing I can do about this stuff and I am pretty well ok with the fact that I think Sundance is not going to be stopped by it, because he Festival is itself now, and doesn't need me out there to talk about it like I did years ago.

Enya

The music sold itself before anybody knew who I was.

Jim Crace

When the narrative itself starts knocking on the glassed-in box that was your prescription for how you were going to write this novel... you have to listen to it.

Charles Caleb Colton

Riches may enable us to confer favors, but to confer them with propriety and grace requires a something that riches cannot give.

Charles Caleb Colton

To cure us of our immoderate love of gain, we should seriously consider how many goods there are that money will not purchase, and these the best; and how many evils there are that money will not remedy, and these the worst.

Charles Caleb Colton

Wealth after all is a relative thing since he that has little and wants less is richer than he that has much and wants more.

Charles Spurgeon

economy is half the battle of life; it is notso hard to earn money as to spend it well.

Alan Watts

So many people of wealth understand much more about making and saving money than about using and enjoying it. They fail to live because they are always preparing to live.

Alan Watts

The reason we have poverty is that we have no imagination. There are a great many people accumulating what they think is vast wealth, but it's only money... they don't know how to enjoy it, because they have no imagination.

Alan Paton

And money is not something to go mad about ... Money is for food and clothes and comfort, and a visit to the pictures. Money is to make happy the lives of children.

Alan Greenspan

As long as we issue fiat currency, I see no alternative to a legal tender law.

Alan Greenspan

Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth.

Charles Dickens

Novelties please less than they impress.

David Shields

My medium is prose, not the novel.

David Mitchell

For me, novels coalesce into being, rather than arrive fully formed.

David Mitchell

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

David Quammen

I used to read only fiction. Now I don't read much, only occasionally, such as a Cormac McCarthy or a Jim Harrison novel.

Edmond de Goncourt

History is a novel that has been lived, a novel is history that could have been.

David Hume

Such is the nature of novelty that where anything pleases it becomes doubly agreeable if new; but if it displeases, it is doubly displeasing on that very account.

Audrey Tautou

When you decide to adapt some Russian novel, it's like everyone knows about it but nobody has read it.

Carol Shields

This is why I read novels: so I can escape my own unrelenting monologue.

Dennis Hastert

I've never run a plantation before. I'm not even sure what kind of association she's trying to make. If she's trying to be racist, I think that's unfortunate.

Charles Dickens

Keep up appearances whatever you do.

Charles Dickens

Sudden shifts and changes are no bad preparation for political life.

Alan Moore

If you're going to have any kind of political opposition in the 21st century, then it has to be as fundamentally liquid as the rapidly changing society we're living in.

Alan Greenspan

If you get beyond the political rhetoric [and assembled a group to solve Social Security] it would take them 15 minutes. It would take them 15 minutes only because 10 minutes was used for pleasantries.

Chris Christie

Here's what I know about political campaigns: no matter what you map out at the beginning, it's always different at the end.

Chris Christie

If I cannot trust someone's judgment, I cannot ask others to do so, and I would not place him at the head of my political operation.

Chiranjeevi

I used to do some philanthropic work, but with the political platform, I can contribute in a bigger way.

David Mitchell

I'm not a great deep political thinker.

David Kim

Economic and political structures that have a far sweeping impact on the lives of billions is not outside the purview of the gospel's redemptive influence.

Alan Bradley

Liberals have always been the most fervent Imperialists.

Camille Paglia

[Sarah] Palin is solidifying her status as a bona fide American cultural heroine.

Caspar Weinberger

We must recognize that personal freedoms diminish as the welfare state grows. The price of more and more public programs is less and less private freedom.

Charley Reese

Powers once assumed are never relinquished, just as bureaucracies, once created, never die.

Charles Krauthammer

Washington is the only place in the world where a gaffe is when a politician accidently speaks the truth.

Billy Joel

I'm a statistic in a system that a civil servant dominates.

Dean Acheson

The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.

David Ricardo

Labour, like all other things which are purchased and sold... has its natural and its market price.

David Hume

Of all sciences there is none where first appearances are more deceitful than in politics.

Charles Caleb Colton

Where true religion has prevented one crime, false religions have afforded a pretext for a thousand.

Alan Watts

Religion is not a department of life; it is something that enters into the whole of it.

Chief Joseph

We do not want churches. They will teach us to quarrel about God.

Carl Sagan

A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later such a religion will emerge.

Michel Onfray

Religion is a reassurance - in fact, that's its only purpose.

Edward Hoagland

It's incongruous that the older we get, the more likely we are to turn in the direction of religion. Less vivid and intense ourselves, closer to the grave, we begin to conceive of ourselves as immortal.

Edward Gibbon

Every event, or appearance, or accident, which seems to deviate from the ordinary course of nature has been rashly ascribed to the immediate action of the Deity.

Edward Gibbon

The gravest of the ecclesiastical historians, Eusebius himself, indirectly confesses that he has related whatever might redound to the glory, and that he has suppressed all that could tend to the disgrace, of religion.

Arnold J. Toynbee

The equation of religion with belief is rather recent.

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.