Author Quotes

William Shakespeare

Victor Hugo

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Leo Tolstoy

Franz Kafka

Edgar Allan Poe

Miguel de Cervantes

We are but a day in this world, and in that day the fashion is changed a thousand times: all seek liberty, yet all deprive themselves of it.

Dante Alighieri

I feel that the longest and worst punishment should be reserved for those who slandered God by inventing Hell.

A persuadable temper might sometimes be as much in favour of happiness as a very resolute character.

I have fallen in love with American names,
The sharp, gaunt names that never get fat,
The snakeskin-titles of mining-claims,
The plumed war-bonnet of Medicine Hat,
Tucson and Deadwood and Lost Mule Flat.

Stephen Vincent Benét

Not to write, for many of us, is to die. We must take ares each and every day, perhaps knowing that the battle cannot be entirely won, but fight we must, if only a gentle bout. The smallest effort to win means, at the end of each day, a sort of victory.

One of the main reasons why the sciences are so poor is that they imagine they are so rich. It isn't their job to throw open the door to infinite wisdom but to put a limit to infinite error.

Galileo speaking

So do the dark in soul expire, Or live like scorpion girt by fire; So writhes the mind remorse hath riven, Unfit for earth, undoom'd for heaven, Darkness above, despair beneath, Around it flame, within it death.

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

In short, virtue cannot live where envy reigns, nor liberality subsist with niggardliness.

Miguel de Cervantes

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

Expecting to be able to get rid of the competitive drive, first of all, flies in the face of human nature — and little girls certainly have this drive, as much as little boys do, or at least the little girls I have observed in my immediate family have it.

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

G. K. Chesterton

To feel admiration for a man all through one's married life would, I think, be excessively tedious.

Agatha Christie

In exiling myself I am not exiling a monster, but a man whom society will not allow to live, since it considers one of the mysterious cogs in God's masterpiece to be a mistake.

So now, whenever I despair, I no longer expect my end, but some bit of luck, some commonplace little miracle which, like a glittering link, will mend again the necklace of my days.

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

Arthur Conan Doyle

"A child!" said Edith, looking at her. "When was I a child? What childhood did you ever leave to me? I was a woman - artful, designing, mercenary, laying snares for men - before I knew myself, or you, or even understood the base and wretched aim of every new display I learnt. You gave birth to a woman. Look upon her. She is in her pride tonight."

Charles Dickens

I tasted - careless - then -
I did not know the Wine
Came once a World - Did you?
Oh, had you told me so -
This Thirst would blister - easier - now

Emily Dickinson

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

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

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

For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on that July afternoon in 1863.

William Faulkner

Negligence is the rust of the soul that corrodes through all her best resolves.

Summary riposte
To the dreary wail
There's no knowing what
Love is all about.
Poets know a lot.

The public always prefers to be reassured. There are those whose job this is. There are only too many.