19th-century Author Quotes

Victor Hugo

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Leo Tolstoy

Franz Kafka

Edgar Allan Poe

Anton Chekhov

Alexander Pushkin

Friendship is the unspeakable joy and blessing that result to two or more individuals who from constitution sympathize. Such natures are liable to no mistakes, but will know each other through thick and thin. Between two by nature alike and fitted to sympathize, there is no veil, and there can be no obstacle. Who are the estranged? Two friends explaining.

Henry David Thoreau

I am naturally taciturn, and became a silent and attentive listener.

William Hamilton Maxwell

What we pay for with our lives never costs too much.

Antonio Porchia

To write weekly, to write daily, to write shortly, to write for busy people catching trains in the morning or for tired people coming home in the evening, is a heartbreaking task for men who know good writing from bad. They do it, but instinctively draw out of harm's way anything precious that might be damaged by contact with the public, or anything sharp that might irritate its skin.

There is in this world in which everything wears out, everything perishes, one thing that crumbles into dust, that destroys itself still more completely, leaving behind still fewer traces of itself than Beauty: namely Grief.

A great enormous thing, like — like nothing. A huge big — well, like a — I don't know — like an enormous big nothing.

The history of men is reflected in the history of sewers.

Only be admonished by what you already see, not to strike leagues of friendship with cheap persons, where no friendship can be. Our impatience betrays us into rash and foolish alliances which no God attends.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas - only I don't exactly know what they are!

When urbanity decays, civilization suffers and decays with it.

James Norman Hall

A woman is fascinated not by art but by the noise made by those in the field.

The physician has a sacred mission on earth; and to fulfill it he begins at the source of life, and goes down to the mysterious darkness of the tomb.

Alexandre Dumas

Truth in art is the unity of a thing with itself: the outward rendered expressive of the inward: the soul made incarnate: the body instinct with spirit. For this reason there is no truth comparable to sorrow.

Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.

Sholem Aleichem

Time is short, my strength is limited, the office is a horror, the apartment is noisy, and if a pleasant, straightforward life is not possible, then one must try to wriggle through by subtle manoeuvres.

We shall not have succeeded in demolishing everything unless we demolish the ruins as well. But the only way I can see of doing that is to use them to put up a lot of fine, well-designed buildings.

I do hate the City of London! It is the only thing which ever comes between us.

Arthur Conan Doyle

Therefore keep in the midst of life. Do not isolate yourself. Be among men and things, and among troubles, and difficulties, and obstacles.

One can hardly think too little of one's self. One can hardly think too much of one's soul.

G. K. Chesterton

Actions are sometimes performed in a masterly and most cunning way, while the direction of the actions is deranged and dependent on various morbid impressions - it's like a dream.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Faith is not trying to believe something regardless of the evidence; faith is daring to do something regardless of the consequences.

You're a grand old flag;
You're a high-flying flag.
And forever in peace may you wave.

George M. Cohan

Those whom we called brutes had their revenge when Darwin showed us that they were our cousins.

George Bernard Shaw

I do not like to sleep when your body lies against mine at night, for I think of death which comes so quickly to put us thoroughly to sleep.

Nothing is hidden from the eyes of the observing world.

Alexander Pushkin