Famous Quotes & Sayings

Michel de Montaigne

Custom is a violent and treacherous school mistress. She, by little and lithe, slyly and unperceived, slips in the foot of her authority; but having by this gentle and humble beginning, with the benefit of time, fixed and established it, she then unmasks a furious and tyrannic countenance, against which we have no more the courage or the power so much as to lift up our eyes.

Michael Kinsley

Anything that keeps a politician humble is healthy for democracy.

Markus Zusak

I am hunted by humans

Mark Twain

The inability to forget is far more devastating than the inability to remember.

Mark Twain

Humor, to be comprehensible to anybody, must be built upon a foundation with which he is familiar. If he can't see the foundation the superstructure is to him merely a freak -- like the Flatiron building without any visible means of support -- something that ought to be arrested.

Mark Twain

The true and lasting genius of humour does not drag you thus to boxes labelled 'pathos,' 'humour,' and show you all the mechanism of the inimitable puppets that are going to perform. How I used to laugh at Simon Tapperwit, and the Wellers, and a host more! But I can't do it now somehow; and time, it seems to me, is the true test of humour. It must be antiseptic.

Mark Twain

Probably there is an imperceptible touch of something permanent that one feels instinctively to adhere to true humour, whereas wit may be the mere conversational shooting up of "smartness"--a bright feather, to be blown into space the second after it is launched...Wit seems to be counted a very poor relation to Humour....Humour is never artificial.

Mark Twain

I pity the fellow who has to create a dialect or paraphrase the dictionary to get laughs. I can't spell, but I have never stooped to spell cat with a 'k' to get at your funny bone. I love a drink, but I never encouraged drunkenness by harping on its alleged funny side.

Mark Twain

So you see, the quality of humor is not a personal or a national monopoly. It's as free as salvation, and, I am afraid, far more widely distributed. But it has its value, I think. The hard and sordid things of life are too hard and too sordid and too cruel for us to know and touch them year after year without some mitigating influence, some kindly veil to draw over them, from time to time, to blur the craggy outlines, and make the thorns less sharp and the cruelties less malignant.

Mark Twain

Humor must be one of the chief attributes of God. Plants and animals that are distinctly humorous in form and characteristics are God's jokes.

Mark Twain

Humorists of the 'mere' sort cannot survive. Humor is only a fragrance, a decoration.

Mark Twain

The funniest things are the forbidden.

Mark Twain

The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it.

Mark Twain

There is no accounting for human beings.

Mark Twain

Thanksgiving day. Let us all give humble, hearty, and sincere thanks now, but the turkeys.

Mark Twain

Everything human is pathetic

Marianne Williamson

The soul force we need in America today, more than any other, is the spirit of atonement. We need to humble ourselves before God and ask forgiveness for the things we have done wrong. We need to ask God to forgive us for our arrogance.

Marianne Williamson

We need to shift from an economic to a humanitarian organizing principle for human civilization. And women, en masse, should be saying so.

Men will confess to treason, murder, arson, false teeth, or a wig. How many of them will own up to a lack of humor?

Francois Rabelais

All things have their ends and cycles. And when they have reached their highest point, they are in their lowest ruin, for they cannot last for long in such a state. Such is the end for those who cannot moderate their fortune and prosperity with reason and temperance.

Francois Rabelais

If you wish to avoid seeing a fool, you must first break your mirror

Christopher Hitchens

The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.

Christopher Flavin

Urgency and vision are the twin pillars on which humanity's hope now hangs.

Christine Vachon

It's humiliating to have to explain your value.

Hayao Miyazaki

Humans have both the urge to create and destroy.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

All intelligent faith in God has behind it a background of humble agnosticism.

Hans Blix

Never humiliate anyone.

George Washington Carver

I know that my Redeemer lives. Thank God I love humanity, complexion doesn't interest me one single a bit.

George Washington

Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations, are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest.

George Washington

Strive not with your superiors in argument, but always submit your judgment to others with modesty.

George Santayana

Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace.

George Mikes

The Americans are extremely gadget minded people and American gadgets have a peculiar characteristic: they work.

George Mikes

Japan is, you often feel, an improved version of the United States.