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

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.

Bruce Braley

The people who know me and know the values I stand for ... know I've always fought to protect the rights of workers.

Lisa Papademetriou

My grandmother was German. She was an immigrant, and my great grandfather fought in World War I and was stationed in France.

Tonya Voeller

We're going to come away learning something from this. I was proud of how the girls fought back.

Marissa Coleman

We knew they were going to go on their runs. The game was a game of runs. We fought back and stayed together as a team and pulled it out.

Tom Hodgkinson

You can become very serious as a parent. That's got to be fought against.

Ellen McLaughlin

I just realized at some point that I was hopelessly in love with the theater. I fought it for a long time because I thought theater was for, you know, insufferable actors.

Gisela Dulko

She fought until the last point. It was a really tight match. And I think yes, it's a really big win for me because I get the opportunity to be in the quarterfinals of this big tournament.

Melanie Hall

She fought hard. It's all about heart. And she's got it. Right then and there I knew she was something special.

Jody Bronson

She fought for every point out there, which is something she always does.

Charles Dickens

Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else.

Charles Dickens

Now, what I want is, Facts. . . . Facts alone are wanted in life.

Alan Perlis

Dealing with failure is easy: Work hard to improve. Success is also easy to handle: You've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve.

Alain Prost

I have no problem with the people who work hard to get success. But I think people are very jealous about success. I work very hard and they don't appreciate that.

Al Pacino

Acting is hard work. At times, it's very energizing and enervating. It's childish. It's also responsible. It's illuminating, enriching, joyful, drab. It's bizarre, diabolical. It's exciting.

Akshay Kumar

I'm glad that I'm being acclaimed as an actor. Today, when my hard work has paid off I can chill out about it.

David McCullough

The title always comes last. What I really work hard on is the beginning. Where do you begin? In what tone do you begin? I almost have to have a scene in my mind.

David McCullough

When the founders wrote about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, they didn't mean longer vacations and more comfortable hammocks. They meant the pursuit of learning. The pursuit of improvement and excellence. In hard work is happiness.

David Krumholtz

Hail, Caesar! is about, in my opinion - I love that movie - but I think it's about the idea that as glamorous as the business is, and for as much hoopla that surrounds moviemaking, ultimately it's just a job. If you focus on it, you can do it really well, and it takes a lot of hard work.

Bill O'Reilly

Gross negligence in handling national security is a felony.

Lee Melchionni

Whenever you can be a part of something where the number one team and number two team are playing each other on national television, it is special. How many people get that opportunity?

Russ Knocke

We were already operating under the National Response Plan.

Michael W. Smith

I sang at the Inaugural prayer service at the National Cathedral.

John Wilhelm

We've become persuaded that, after two years of trying to reform the national AFL-CIO, it is unwilling to change,

LenDale White

We're back-to-back national champions. You can't spell BCS without USC.

LenDale White

We're back-to-back national champions, ... I know you can't spell BCS without USC.

Vladimir Putin

Russian democracy is the power of the Russian people with their own traditions of national self-government, and not the realisation of standards foisted on us from outside.

Kofi Annan

What governments and people don't realise is that sometimes the collective interest - the international interest - is also the national interest.

David Krumholtz

I'm not sure I enjoyed doing [Gigi Does It]. I'm cool with just being an actor. If anything, I learned to be proud of being an actor.

Catherine Ashton

I was the first woman British commissioner, the first woman trade commissioner, so I am also proud to be the first woman High Representative.

Catherynne M. Valente

Respect me. Be proud, and if you love me, a little afraid, because love so often looks like fear. We are alike. We are alike.

Vickie Simmons

We are proud we can give teachers the kind of salary we do.

Justin Glover

We are proud of the improvements that we have made since 2004. We are going to keep striving to do better.

Stefan Pryor

We are proud of the effectiveness of our procedures.

Chad Bankston

We still, obviously, have a lot of work to do, but I'm proud of them.

William Shakespeare

Tis beauty that doth oft make women proud; but, God He knows, thy share thereof is small.

Ed Harris

When I decided to direct, never having done that before, is something I'm very proud of

Leonid Hurwicz

My father was convinced, I think rightly, that if he stayed in Russia, he would have trouble with Lenin.

Linda Grant

When I was in my 20s in the 1970s, I read all of Jean Rhys. I have reread very little since because the first impressions were so powerful they have stayed with me.

Tequan Richmond

Going through different places, I stopped through Dubai and stayed there overnight. There I had an ultra-culture shock.

Pat Buchanan

On an intellectual level, it stayed up on that level, ... It didn't get down to anything grisly, so I was delighted.

Cameron Bennerman

Short-range shots, you're going to know where it's going to come off, so I just stayed with it.

John Short

She never showed up, ... We stayed until 4 in the morning. We don't know why she didn't come.

Joan Armatrading

So I've had lots of different bands over the years who have stayed with me for certain tours.

Neon Hitch

I didn't go to school, because I never stayed anywhere long enough, so I was completely closed off from the outside world. I had no idea about anything.

Ciara

I want to be one of those moms and women that when I look back, I know that I always stayed focused.

Marc Benioff

I think the most surprising thing about giving is it takes a while to find out what you're really interested in and what you really want to do.

Steve Bisley

As an actor, the thing I want to do to an audience is always be ahead of them and always be surprising in the work without deviating from the writer's intention.

Philip Schiller

We want things to be beautiful, surprising to see, but they also have to be functional. One without the other doesn't make any sense.

A. S. Byatt

Everything is surprising, rightly seen.

Carol Windley

I can get really obsessive. I like writing many drafts, and I try not to because it is very time-consuming, especially when you're working on a novel. But I do like to take a story and reorder it, put things in different places. This allows me to see things in a new and sometimes surprising way.

Astro Teller

Here is the surprising truth: It's often easier to make something 10 times better than it is to make it 10 percent better.

Michael Hein

I was shocked. I won't say it was crushing, but it was surprising and disappointing.

Rodney Brooks

If you want a machine to be able to interact with people, it better not do things that are surprising to people.

Mark Zuckerberg

The thing that's been really surprising about the evolution of Facebook is - I think then, and I think now - that if we didn't do this, someone else would have done it.