Lost Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

And after reading Thoreau I felt how much I have lost by leaving nature out of my life.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.

Friedrich Nietzsche

That book taught me that by reading, I could live more intensely. It could give me back the sight I had lost. For that reason alone, a book that didn't matter to anyone changed my life.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón

If your friend has displeased you, you shall not sit down to consider it, for he has already lost all memory of the passage, and has doubled his power to serve you, and, ere you can rise up again, will burden you with blessings.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Each in the most hidden sack kept the lost jewels of memory, intense love, secret nights and permanent kisses, the fragment of public or private happiness. A few, the wolves, collected thighs, other men loved the dawn scratching mountain ranges or ice floes, locomotives, numbers. For me happiness was to share singing, praising, cursing, crying with a thousand eyes. I ask forgiveness for my bad ways: my life had no use on earth.

All that glitters is not gold; Often have you heard that told: Many a man his life has sold But my outside to behold: Gilded tombs do worms enfold Had you been as wise as bold, Your in limbs, in judgment old, Your answer had not been in'scroll'd Fare you well: your suit is cold.' Cold, indeed, and labour lost: Then, farewell, heat and welcome, frost!

William Shakespeare

Contemporary societies have lost the sense of the feast but have kept the obscure drive for it. Or rather, they have lost the religious sense of the feast and have tried to replace it with something else.

Sir, I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.

The heart of Man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact,
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.

J. R. R. Tolkien

Venice was and is full of lost places where people put up for sale the last worn bits of their souls, hoping no one will buy.

All that is gold does not glitter;
not all those that wander are lost.

J. R. R. Tolkien

Observe good faith and justice towards all Nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and Morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and, at no distant period, a great Nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt, that, in the course of time and things, the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages, which might be lost by a steady adherence to it? Can it be, that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a Nation with its Virtue?

George Washington

We have to see that the spirit of the South Atlantic—the real spirit of Britain—is kindled not only by war but can now be fired by peace. We have the first prerequisite. We know that we can do it—we haven't lost the ability. That is the Falklands Factor.

Margaret Thatcher

You have lost no reputation at all, unless you repute yourself such a loser.

William Shakespeare

Holiness grows so fast where there is kindness. The world is lost for want of sweetness and kindness. Do not forget we need each other.

Is Bliss then, such Abyss, I must not put my foot amiss For fear I spoil my shoe? I'd rather suit my foot Than save my Boot — For yet to buy another Pair is possible, At any store — But Bliss, is sold just once. The Patent lost None buy it any more —

Emily Dickinson

The stage lost a fine actor, even as science lost an acute reasoner, when [Holmes] became a specialist in crime.

Arthur Conan Doyle

The chance which now seems lost may present itself at the last moment.

His head was always most valuable when he had lost it. In such moments he put two and two together and made four million.

G. K. Chesterton

One day, on tearing off some old bark, I saw two rare beetles, and seized one in each hand. Then I saw a third and new kind, which I could not bear to lose, so I popped the one which I held in my right hand into my mouth. Alas! it ejected some intensely acrid fluid, which burnt my tongue so that I was forced to spit the beetle out, which was lost, as was the third one.

Many free countries have lost their liberty, and ours may lose hers; but, if she shall, be it my proudest plume, not that I was the last to desert, but that I never deserted her.

Abraham Lincoln

I think very much of the people, as an old friend said he thought of woman. He said when he lost his first wife, who had been a great help to him in his business, he thought he was ruined—that he could never find another to fill her place. At length, however, he married another, who he found did quite as well as the first, and that his opinion now was that any woman would do well who was well done by. So I think of the whole people of this nation—they will ever do well if well done by. We will try to do well by them in all parts of the country, North and South, with entire confidence that all will be well with all of us.

Abraham Lincoln

Consider the Koran... this wretched book was sufficient to start a world-religion, to satisfy the metaphysical need of countless millions for twelve hundred years, to become the basis of their morality and of a remarkable contempt for death, and also to inspire them to bloody wars and the most extensive conquests. In this book we find the saddest and poorest form of theism. Much may be lost in translation, but I have not been able to discover in it one single idea of value.

Arthur Schopenhauer

No men living are more worthy to be trusted than those who toil up from poverty; none less inclined to take or touch aught which they have not honestly earned. Let them beware of surrendering a political power which they already possess, and which if surrendered will surely be used to close the door of advancement against such as they and to fix new disabilities and burdens upon them till all of liberty shall be lost.

Abraham Lincoln

The South-wind brings Life, sunshine and desire, And on every mount and meadow Breathes aromatic fire; But over the dead he has no power, The lost, the lost, he cannot restore; And, looking over the hills, I mourn The darling who shall not return.

Ralph Waldo Emerson