Famous Quotes & Sayings

Walter Savage Landor

Of all studies, the most delightful and the most useful is biography. The seeds of great events lie near the surface; historians delve too deep for them. No history was ever true. Lives I have read which, if they were not, had the appearance, the interest, and the utility of truth.

Walter Savage Landor

If there were no falsehood in the world, there would be no doubt, if there were no doubt, there would be no inquiry; if no inquiry, no wisdom, no knowledge, no genius; and Fancy herself would lie muffled up in her robe, inactive, pale, and bloated.

Walter Savage Landor

The worse of ingratitude lies not in the ossified heart of him who commits it, but we find it in the effect it produces on him against whom it was committed.

Walter Scott

Within that awful volume lies The mystery of mysteries!

Walter Gropius

A modern building should derive its architectural significance solely from the vigour and consequence of its own organic proportions. It must be true to itself, logically transparent, and virginal of lies or trivialities.

Yitzhak Rabin

I believe that it is my responsibility as the prime minister of Israel to do whatever can be done to exploit the unique opportunities that lie ahead of us to move towards peace. Not everything can be done by one act.

Yevgeny Zamyatin

Along the blade of a knife lies the path of paradox—the single most worthy path of the fearless mind . . . .

Yevgeny Zamyatin

The knife is the most durable, immortal, the most genius thing that man created. The knife was the guillotine; the knife is the universal means of solving all knots; and along the blade of a knife lies the path of paradox - the single most worthy path of the fearless mind.

Yevgeny Zamyatin

Accentuated plainness and accentuated vice ought to bring about harmony. Beauty lies in harmony, in style, whether it be the harmony of ugliness or beauty, vice or virtue.

Yevgeny Zamyatin

Don't forget that we lawyers, we're a higher breed of intellect, and so it's our privilege to lie. It's as clear as day. Animals can't even imagine lying: if you were to find yourself among some wild islanders, they too would only speak the truth until they learned about European culture.

Winston Churchill

Whenever I feel the need to take some exercise I lie down until the feeling goes away.

Winston Churchill

I no longer listen to what people say, I just watch what they do. Behavior never lies.

Winston Churchill

In war, the truth must be guarded by a body guard of lies.

Winston Churchill

A small lie needs a bodyguard of bigger lies to protect it.

Winston Churchill

There are no limits to the majestic future which lies before the mighty expanse of Canada with its virile, aspiring, cultured, and generous-hearted people.

Winston Churchill

Mr Churchill, to what do you attribute your success in life? Conservation of energy. Never stand up when you can sit down. And never sit down when you can lie down.

Winston Churchill

Study history, study history. In history lies all the secrets of statecraft.

Willie Brown

In politics, a lie unanswered becomes truth within 24 hours.

William S. Paley

White lies always introduce others of a darker complexion.

William S. Burroughs

For any species to change, if they are unable and are unwilling to do so - I might, for example, have suggested to the dinosaurs that heavy armor and great size was a sinking ship, and that they do well to convert to mammal facilities - it would not lie in my power or desire to reconvert a reluctant dinosaur.

William S. Burroughs

When all lies, deceit, pretense is stripped away, what remains? The truth of a painting, or a book or a man.

William Maxwell

In talking about the past, we lie with every breath we draw.

Virginia Woolf

We are cut, we are fallen. We are become part of that unfeeling universe that sleeps when we are at our quickest and burns red when we lie asleep.

Virginia Woolf

A thing there was that mattered; a thing, wreathed about with chatter, defaced, obscured in her own life, let drop every day in corruption, lies, chatter. This he had preserved. Death was defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of reaching the centre which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded, one was alone. There was an embrace in death.

Virginia Woolf

Her life was a tissue of vanity and deceit.

Vincent D'Onofrio

All of us are trying to achieve 100 percent in our work. That's all we struggle to do. We never do, but we never stop trying until the day we die. It's that struggle to achieve 100 percent, that's where our performance lies, that's what the audience gets. They get the struggle.

Woodrow Wilson

The shadows that now lie dark upon our path will soon be dispelled and we shall walk with the light all about us if we but be true to ourselves.

Woodrow Wilson

The Constitution was not made to fit us like a straitjacket. In its elasticity lies its chief greatness.

Woodrow Wilson

Here lies, in a "horizontal" position The "outside" case of Peter Pendulum, watch-maker. He departed this life "wound up" In hopes of being "taken in hand" by his Maker, And of being thoroughly "cleaned, repaired" and "set a-going" In the world to come.

Woodrow Wilson

What every man seeks is satisfaction. He deceives himself so long as he imagines it to lie in self-indulgence.

Woodrow Wilson

I have had the accomplishment of something like this at heart ever since I was a boy.... So I feel tonight like the man who is lodging happily in the inn which lies half way along the journey and that in time, with a fresh impulse, we shall go the rest of the journey and sleep at the journey's end like men with a quiet conscience.

Saint Augustine

To dye oneself with paints in order to have a rosier or a paler complexion is a lying counterfeit.

Wole Soyinka

Power is domination, control, and therefore a very selective form of truth which is a lie.