Author Quotes

In the house, and on the street, how many, many feet you meet.

It is better to waste one's youth than to do nothing with it at all.

Georges Courteline

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

Most critical fault-finding, when reduced to its essentials, simply amounts to reproach of the author because he is himself -- thinks, feels, sees, and creates, as himself, instead of seeing and creating in the way the critic would have done.

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

Five minutes! Zounds! I have been five minutes too late all my life-time!

Thou art the cause, and most accursed effect.

William Shakespeare

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

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.

My desk, most loyal friend
thank you. You've been with me on
every road I've taken.
My scar and my protection.

Marina Tsvetaeva

I love Germany so dearly that I hope there will always be two of them.

François Mauriac

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.

It is amazing how nice people are to you when they know you are going away.

Now as all the sciences are connected with each other, Philosophy is never completed. In a complete system of all the sciences will philosophy for the first time be made manifest.

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

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

Agatha Christie

Sometimes I think that Darwin made a mistake and that in fact man is descended from the pig, because eight out of every ten members of the human race are swine, and as crooked as a hog's tail.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Everyone chases after happiness, not noticing that happiness is at their heels.

Beautiful... as the fortuitous encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table.

Comte de Lautréamont

Nothing now remains for us seven but to go back to Stable Hill, proclaim the truth, and take the adventure that Aslan sends us.

In every sorrowing soul I pour'd delight, And poverty stood smiling in my sight.

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

George Bernard Shaw

Favored by advertisers, preteens, and writers of ransom notes, the exclamation point is less a mark of punctuation than an oratorical cue or a typographical shriek — in newspaper slang, a 'screamer'.

Richard Nordquist

Art is a misleading, deceptive superstition; in it we think that we have before us the last, innermost essence of humanity itself; and yet, it merely foists upon us a beautiful product of man, in which are set down all of the egotistical, self-satisfying thoughts and emotions which remain sterile and ineffective in the world of action. And I, imbecile, esteem this product more highly than the human being himself, whom God has created.

Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder