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.

Larry Hansen

The only authority we had was to interview. Everybody made recommendations from different panels, and the city manager picked who he felt were the top three.

Albert Einstein

Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

Colin Channer

We started talking about all the things in readings that don't work. We decided the people planning them don't think of the most important people involved - the author and the audience.

Charles Territo

We believe that the (federal government) has sole authority to regulate fuel economy in order to avoid a patchwork quilt of fuel economy regulations.

Jeff Bezos

We believe that over time this could turn into a significant business for Amazon, significant revenue stream for publishers and authors and a helpful customer service for readers,

George Postolos

We stand ready to honor the bargain we struck with the sports authority, and we hope and expect that the sports authority will do the same.

Nigel Barker

Everyone gets a pencil as a kid, but it doesn't make them all authors or painters or drawers or anything else.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

My relationship to power and authority is that I'm all for it.

Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Christ is the source of all true priesthood authority and power on earth. It is His work, in which we are privileged to assist.

Charles Dickens

Although I am an old man, night is generally my time for walking.

Charles Dickens

There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.

Charles Caleb Colton

Mathematicians have sought knowledge in figures, Philosophers in systems, Logicians in subtleties, and Metaphysicians in sounds. It is not in any nor in all of these. He that studies only men, will get the body of knowledge without the soul, and he that studies only books, the soul without the body.

Charles Caleb Colton

When in reading we meet with any maxim that may be of use, we should take it for our own, and make an immediate application of it, as we would of the advice of a friend whom we have purposely consulted.

Charles Caleb Colton

We should choose our books as we would our companions, for their sterling and intrinsic merit.

Charles Caleb Colton

Some read to think, these are rare; some to write, these are common; and some read to talk, and these form the great majority.

Charles Caleb Colton

Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.

Charles Caleb Colton

With books, as with companions, it is of more consequence to know which to avoid, than which to choose, for good books are as scarce as good companions, and in both instances, all that we can learn from baad ones is, that some much time has been worse than thrown away.

Charles Caleb Colton

He that studies only men will get the body of knowledge without the soul; and he that studies only books, the soul without the body.

Leonard Susskind

Space can vibrate, space can fluctuate, space can be quantum mechanical, but what the devil is it? And, you know, everybody has their own idea about what it is, but there's no coherent final consensus on why there is space.

Ravi Zacharias

I am totally convinced the Christian faith is the most coherent worldview around.

P. J. O'Rourke

Think what evil creeps liberals would be if their plans to enfeeble the individual, exhaust the economy, impede the rule of law, and cripple national defense were guided by a coherent ideology instead of smug ignorance.

Susan Isaacs

As for writing novels - it's what I've done for 30 some-odd years. I can't suddenly say I'm going to take up golf. I need something in my life. As long as I can write a coherent sentence, I'll keep at it.

Jeremy Corbyn

Basically, on the question of Europe, I want to see a social Europe, a cohesive Europe, a coherent Europe, not a free market Europe.

Jon Brockman

I have a little headache still, but I'm a little more coherent today. With a full day's rest, I'll be fine by (Saturday's game).

Jonathan Halpern

I think the government presented a relatively streamlined case. It was a pretty coherent presentation of the witnesses.

Loren Thompson

There is a huge demand for spare parts that only Sikorsky can meet. Without the Teamsters, the company can't maintain a coherent production schedule.

John Crosby

He is forced to be literate about the illiterate, witty about the witless and coherent about the incoherent.

Byron Katie

Everything happens for me, not to me.

Bryan Ferry

I can never predict what's going to happen.

Catherynne M. Valente

That’s what happens to friends, eventually. They leave you. It’s practically what they’re for.

Arne Glimcher

Everything happens through relationships.

Edgar Bergen

Funny, nothing ever happens nowadays.

Bill Murray

Be available for life to happen.

John Cohen

Tomorrow, we'll get a big hug going, and we'll talk about past times, and then the first pitch will be thrown, and he won't see John Cohen, he'll see the enemy. I won't see Pat McMahon, I'll see a team that we're trying to beat. That happens a lot in this league.

Tom Pecora

We're getting there. We still haven't had a night where everyone is playing their total A-game. But that's OK. I'm hoping that happens next weekend.

Red Cavaney

What happens when we don't have a year like this one?

Byron Katie

Thoughts are just what is. They appear. They're innocent. They're not personal.

Charlotte Lennox

When a person is found less guilty than he is suspected, he is concluded more innocent than he really is.

Elizabeth I

A clear and innocent conscience fears nothing.

Adolph Gottlieb

If we depart form tradition, it is out of knowledge , not innocence.

Albert Camus

The innocent is the person who explains nothing

Christopher Walken

Sometimes a certain innocence is good, but not about yourself.

Alice Thomas Ellis

Adolescence is usually typified by an unanswerable combination of innocence and insolence.

Anthony Anderson

Everyone realized I was the innocent victim of a shakedown.

Anthony Anderson

More oftentimes than not, you're automatically guilty before innocent.

Alan Moore

The comics medium has some unusual features that do make it very different, in that it's combining a verbal narrative with a visual one that allows for much richer possibilities of transmitting information.

David Shields

Nonfiction, qua label, is nothing more or less than a very flexible (easily breakable) frame that allows you to pull the thing away from narrative and toward contemplation, which is all I've ever wanted.

David Shields

Resolution and conclusion are inherent in a plot-driven narrative.

David Shields

I'm not interested in collage as the refuge of the composition-ally disabled. I'm interested in collage as (to be honest) an evolution beyond narrative.

Djuna Barnes

I have a narrative, but you will be put to it to find it.

Brian Eno

My shows are not narratives.

Bruce Springsteen

I like narrative storytelling as being part of a tradition, a folk tradition.

A. S. Byatt

Narrative is one of the best intoxicants or tranquilisers.

Carter Burwell

Music is the subliminal connecting adhesive in film, or at least in narrative feature films.

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.

Sibel Edmonds

When you think of al-Qaeda, you are not thinking of al-Qaeda in terms of one particular country, or one particular organization.

Robert Mueller

As I said before, there are often disagreements as to what a particular set of facts mean. That is not at all unusual, and one shouldn't read into it more than is there.

Samuel L. Jackson

She has been in here several times before but that particular day I don't remember her.

Jill Soloway

So many features at Sundance seemed to be powered more on the director's need to be a director than any particular story.

Frank Quattrone

I don't follow any particular periodical anymore. I use Twitter as my customized news feed.

Nathaniel Philbrick

'Moby-Dick' has a remarkable way of resonating with whatever is going on in the world at that particular moment.

Warren Littlefield

The writers and actors on 'Friends' were notoriously particular about what made it onto the air.

Aaron Patzer

Most people don't know what they spend in every single area, but they know they have a problem in particular areas.

Bennie Thompson

Today's terrorists do not share a particular ethnic, educational or socioeconomic background.

Charles Caleb Colton

It is astonishing how much more anxious people are to lengthen life than to improve it; and as misers often lose large sums of money in attempting to make more, so do hypochondriacs squander large sums of time in search of nostrums by which they vainly hope they may get more time to squander.

Charles Dickens

A multitude of people and yet solitude.

Charles Dickens

My faith in the people governing is, on the whole, infinitesimal; my faith in the people governed is, on the whole, illimitable.

Charles Dickens

Others had been a little wild, which was not to be wondered at, and not very blamable; but, he had made a lamentation and uproar which it was dangerous for the people to hear, as there is always contagion in weakness and selfishness.

Charles Dickens

Mrs. Boffin and me, ma'am, are plain people, and we don't want to pretend to anything, nor yet to go round and round at anything because there's always a straight way to everything.

Charles Dickens

Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and some people do the same by their religion.

Charles Dickens

I have heard it said that as we keep our birthdays when we are alive, so the ghosts of dead people, who are not easy in their graves, keep the day they died upon.

Charles Dickens

Some people are nobody's enemies but their own

Charles Soule

Superman/Wonder Woman, people expected, I guess, a lot of romance, or maybe something that wasnt emotionally deep. Who knows?

Satya Pradhuman

The point is, we're not out of the woods yet,

Michael Vickers

The point is to stop it (illegal immigration), and if we have to do it ourselves, we're going to do everything we can to stop it.

Craig Martin

The point is to get it right, not necessarily to get it done early.

Father Thomas

The point is that we are not at a place yet where we can say one way or the other.

Livan Hernandez

The point is, it's now or never. You try to make the playoffs.

Jan Egeland

The point here is it could have been avoided. It didn't have to reach these proportions.

Jim Clarke

We are at the point where we have succeeded in accomplishing what we wanted to do.

Tom Renney

We have to get to the point where he thinks he could play, and I don't think we're at that point.

Michael Ondaatje

You're getting everyone's point of view at the same time, which, for me, is the perfect state for a novel: a cubist state, the cubist novel.

Charles Studd

I realized that my life was to be one of simple, childlike faith, and that my part was to trust, not to do. I was to trust in Him and He would work in me to do His good pleasure. From that time my life was different.

Charles Stanley

God's plan for enlarging His kingdom is so simple - one person telling another about the Savior. Yet we're busy and full of excuses. Just remember, someone's eternal destiny is at stake. The joy you'll have when you meet that person in heaven will far exceed any discomfort you felt in sharing the gospel.

Alan Watts

The anitya doctrine is, again, not quite the simple assertion that the world is impermanent, but rather that the more one grasps at the world, the more it changes.

Alan Rickman

The difference between being an actor and a director is simple. The director has to hide his panic; the actor doesn't.

Alan Moore

Nothing's that simple, not even things that are simply awful.

Alan Cooper

Keep it simple: In general, interfaces should use simple geometric forms, minimal contours, and a restricted color palette comprised primarily of less-saturated or neutral colors balanced with a few high contrast accent colors that emphasize important information. Typography should not vary widely in an interface.

Aiden Wilson Tozer

Nothing in or of this world measures up to the simple pleasure of experiencing the presence of God.

Chris Carmack

I've often been described more than once in my life as very much like a golden retriever. Just sort of happy and excited to do whatever it is even if it's as simple as retrieving a ball and bringing it back ad nauseum.

Chris Abani

Men do communicate, often very directly, but women sometimes cannot accept how simple what we have to say is. We seldom play games--we aren't that sophisticated.

Charles Caleb Colton

There are some frauds so well conducted that it would be stupidity not to be deceived by them.

Alan Watts

If you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you'll spend your life completely wasting your time. You'll be doing things you don't like doing in order to go on living, that is to go on doing thing you don't like doing, which is stupid.

Alan Price

I think it's like everything else; one shouldn't dig too deeply. It's silly to say that with a journalist, but sometimes there is not a truth to be found.

Alan Moore

With so much chaos, someone will do something stupid. And when they do, things will turn nasty

Alan Moore

I thought as much. Miss Murray, though I am a beast, do not think that I am stupid. I know that I am hideous and hateful. I am not loved, nor ever hope to be. Nor am I fool enough to think that what I feel for you is love. But in this world, alone, I do not hate you. And alone in this world, you do not hate me.

Alan Bradley

One of the marks of a truly great mind, I had discovered, is the ability to feign stupidity on demand.

Alain Prost

I think maybe the English don't want to try something and look stupid, because they are a bit reserved.

Chris Colfer

I'm allergic to stupidity.

Chris Christie

Maybe because I'm from New Jersey, I just have this kind of plain language hangup. But I would make very clear - I would not talk to Vladimir Putin. In fact, I would talk to Vladimir Putin a lot. But I'd say to him, "Listen, Mr. President, there's a no-fly zone in Syria; you fly in, it applies to you." And yes, we would shoot down the planes of Russian pilots if in fact they were stupid enough to think that this president was the same feckless weakling that the president we have in the Oval Office is right now.

Davis III

We got to watch a lot of their match. We suggested that we go around them, but that didn't go over real well.

Arthur Bloch

The compromise will always be more expensive than either of the suggestions it is compromising.

Fred Taylor

There are theories that suggest that. But we need a much better understanding before we can know about things.

Don Brunell

What we suggest is that they look at ones already in place to see if they are necessary.

Abheek Barua

There is nothing to suggest that would be the trend.

Joseph Powers

Irrigation is being done on the (town hall) mall, so I would suggest French's Common,

Mary Wesley

You know what it's like to persuade a pigheaded child to do something they don't want to. If they hear the same suggestion from someone else, they'll go right off and do it.

Malcolm Bradbury

If God had been a liberal, we wouldn't have had the Ten Commandments - we'd have the Ten Suggestions.

Emile Coue

From our birth to our death we are all the slaves of suggestion.

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

Try to do unto others as you would have them do to you, and do not be discouraged if they fail sometimes. It is much better that they should fail than you should.

Charles Spurgeon

Dear friends, whenever you want to understand a text of Scripture, try to read the original

Charles Spurgeon

The great reason why we have so little good preaching is that we have so little piety. To be eloquent one must be in earnest; he must not only act as if he were in earnest, or try to be in earnest, but be in earnest.

Alan Watts

A myth is an image in terms of which we try to make sense of the world.

Alan Watts

But we try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us.

Alan Watts

Hurrying and delaying are alike ways of trying to resist the present.

Alan Parsons

That Beatle euphoria has always been there, and it's hard to be in a room with a Beatle and try to be totally natural. You never shake that off.

Alan Moore

I try to do things in comics that cannot be repeated by television, by movies, by interactive entertainment.

Alan Arkin

Improvisation sometimes seemed more like jazz than acting, like verbal jazz, with the actors playing a theme back and forth, and then introducing another theme, incorporating it, somehow trying to work their way all together to a meaning of some kind, or at least a conclusion.

Warren Zevon

I remember certain lines and whose they are.

Abu Bakr

When you seek advice, do not withhold any facts from the person whose advice you seek.