Quotes

This page contains a selection of quotes that I like. Words that mean something or make a difference. Words that make you think, laugh or just find familiarity with others in this world. - Lord Brunton

"Deal with the small before it becomes large." - Lao Tzu (570-490 BC)

"Be not ashamed of mistakes and thus make them crimes." - Confucius (551-479 BC)

"Nothing endures but change." - Heraclitus (535–475 BC)

"It is better by noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to half of the evils we anticipate than to remain in cowardly listlessness for fear of what might happen." - Herodotus (484-424 BC)

"My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher." - Socrates (470-399 BC)

"I have often regretted my speech, never my silence." - Xenocrates (396-314 BC)

"Wit is educated insolence." - Aristotle (384-322 BC)

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." - Aristotle (384-322 BC)

"It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both." - Niccolo Machiavelli aka The Prince (1469-1527)

"Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness." – Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

"Most of the evils of life arise from man's being unable to sit still in a room." - Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

"Nature is an infinite sphere of which the centre is everywhere and the circumference nowhere." - Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

"Man finds nothing so intolerable as to be in a state of complete rest, without passions, without occupation, without diversion, without effort. Then he feels his nullity, loneliness, inadequacy, dependence, helplessness, emptiness." - Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

"Heav'n hath no rage like love to hatred turn'd, nor Hell a fury like a woman scorn'd." - William Congreve (1670-1729)

"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." - Francois Marie Arouet aka Voltaire (1694-1778)

"I may not agree with what you say, but to your death I will defend your right to say it." - Francois Marie Arouet aka Voltaire (1694-1778)

"Words are but the signs of ideas." - Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

"Words written without effort are read without pleasure." - Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

"In order to know virtue, we must first acquaint ourselves with vice." – Marquis de Sade (1740-1814)

"You say that my way of thinking cannot be tolerated? What of it? The man who alters his way of thinking to suit others is a fool. My way of thinking is the result of my reflections. It is part of my inner being, the way I am made. I do not contradict them, and would not even if I wished to. For my system, which you disapprove of is also my greatest comfort in life, the source of all my happiness - it means more to me than my life itself." - Marquis de Sade (1740-1814)

"I write of the great eternal truths that bind all men together the whole world over. We eat, we shit, we fuck, we kill and we die." - Marquis de Sade (1740-1814)

"The power of population is so superior to the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction; and often finish the dreadful work themselves." - Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834)

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." - Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

"In the foam-islands in a fiercely boiling pool, at the bottom of a waterfall, there is sameness from infinite change." - Samuel Taylor-Coleridge (1772-1834)

"Poetry gives most pleasure when only generally and not perfectly understood." - Samuel Taylor-Coleridge (1772-1834)

"I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them." - Jane Austen (1775-1817)

"If I do not write to empty my mind, I go mad." - Lord George Byron (1788-1824)

"I have no consistency, except in politics; and that probably arises from my indifference to the subject altogether." - Lord George Byron (1788-1824)

"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, there is a rapture on the lonely shore, there is society where none intrudes, by the deep Sea and music in its roar, I love not Man the less, but Nature more." - Lord George Byron (1788-1824)

"There is something Pagan in me that I cannot shake off. In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everything." - Lord George Byron (1788-1824)

"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." - Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creatures that cannot." - Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"I want to get to the point where people say of my work, that man feels deeply." - Van Gogh (1853-1890)

"Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego'." - Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"I am not young enough to know everything." - Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Misfortunes one can endure. But to suffer for one's own faults, ah! There is the sting of life." - Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Fashion is merely a form of ugliness so unbearable that we are compelled to alter it every six months." - Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught." - Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility." - Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

"The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary, men alone are quite capable of every wickedness." - Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)

"Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo." - H.G.Wells (1866-1946)

"Be the change you want to see in the world." - Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry on as if nothing had happened." - Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"It is my view that the vegetarian manner of living, by its purely physical effect on the human temperament, would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind." - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"The world needs anger. The world often continues to allow evil because it isn't angry enough." - Bede Jarrett (1881-1937)

"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" - H.M.Warner (1881-1958) the founder of Warner Brothers.

"If someone betrays you once it is their fault, if someone betrays you twice it is your fault." – Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)

"Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers." - T.S.Eliot (1888-1965)

"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others." - Groucho Marx (1895-1977)

"Money frees you from doing things you dislike. Since I dislike doing nearly everything, money is handy." - Groucho Marx (1895-1977)

"I've had a wonderful time, but this wasn't it." - Groucho Marx (1895-1977)

"Never mistake motion for action." - Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

"I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better." - A.J.Liebling (1904-1963)

"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad." - Salvador Dali (1904-1989)

"Always do what you want, and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind." - Theodor Geisel aka Dr. Seuss (1904-1991)

"Neither camera, nor lens, nor film determine the quality of pictures; it is the visual perception of the man behind the mechanism which brings them to life. Art contains the allied ideas of making and begetting, of being master in one’s craft and of being able to create. Without these properties no art exists and no photographic art can come into being." - Helmut Gernsheim (1913-1995)

"Violence is the first refuge of the incompetent." - Issac Asimov (1920-1992)

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." - Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)

"The death of childhood is the beginning of poetry." - Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986)

"We have forgotten to observe. Instead of observing, we do things according to patterns." - Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986)

"Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free." - Jim Morrison (1943-1971)

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so." - Douglas Adams (1952-2001)

"The hardest thing for people to see is themselves." - Master Cheng Yen

"We must carry out our tasks according to our principles and not let our principles be compromised by our tasks." - Master Cheng Yen

"The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think." - Edwin Schlossberg

"The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy

"Men go to far greater lengths to avoid what they fear than to obtain what they desire." - from "The da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown

"Black holes are where God divided by zero." - Steven Wright

"Wars of nations are fought to change maps. But wars of poverty are fought to map change." - Muhammad Ali

"I know where I'm going and I know the truth, and I don't have to be what you want me to be. I'm free to be what I want." - Muhammad Ali

The following are things that I have thought or said. Whilst they aren't famous quotes, I believe they have a place here for interest's sake. - Lord Brunton

"Truth is bound to time."

"I am my own slave and king forever."

"If you stare too long at death then it becomes your own."

"Seeking the hidden often results in overlooking the obvious."

"There are only so many stains that will wash from your soul."

"In love we usually seek an equal and often miss the compatible."

"If all that you perceive is that which you see, then you may as well be blind."

"Some days I am the hammer. Some days I am the chisel. Today, I am the rock."

"I say things, because they are the truth. People don't want to hear them, because they are the truth."