Christmas quotes

A collection of quotes on the topic of anniversary, christmas, christmas, love.

Best christmas quotes

Sun Tzu photo

“Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”

Sun Tzu (-543–-495 BC) ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher from the Zhou Dynasty

This has often been attributed to Sun Tzu and sometimes to Petrarch. It comes most directly from a line spoken by Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part II (1974), written by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola:
My father taught me many things here. He taught me in this room. He taught me: keep your friends close but your enemies closer.
Niccolò Machiavelli, who is also sometimes credited, wrote on the subject in The Prince:
It is easier for the prince to make friends of those men who were contented under the former government, and are therefore his enemies, than of those who, being discontented with it, were favourable to him and encouraged him to seize it.
Misattributed

James M. Cain photo

“If you have to do it, you can do it.”

Mildred Pierce

Libba Bray photo

“To live is to love, to love is to live.”

Source: Going Bovine

Niccolo Machiavelli photo

“Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”

Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527) Italian politician, Writer and Author

Machiavelli commented on the relative ease of gaining favor from friends and enemies in Chapter 20 of The Prince, quoted above. However, this particular wording comes from a line spoken by Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part II (1974), written by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola:
My father taught me many things here. He taught me in this room. He taught me: keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.
Misattributed

Thomas Aquinas photo

“To love is to will the good of the other.”

II-II, q. 26, art. 6
Summa Theologica (1265–1274)

Francis of Assisi photo

“For it is in giving that we receive.”

Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) Catholic saint and founder of the Franciscan Order
Mario Puzo photo
Victor Borge photo

“Santa Claus has the right idea: visit people once a year”

Victor Borge (1909–2000) Danish and US-American comedian and musician
Oscar Wilde photo

Christmas quotes

Helen Keller photo

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Variant: The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.
Variant: The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen, nor touched... but are felt in the heart.

Winston S. Churchill photo

“There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.”

Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…
Edith Sitwell photo
Carlos Ruiz Zafón photo
Ronald Reagan photo
Norman Vincent Peale photo
John Greenleaf Whittier photo

“The joy that you give to others
Is the joy that comes back to you.”

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892) American Quaker poet and advocate of the abolition of slavery

First published in The Educational Monthly of Canada, Volume 24‎ (1901), p. 29
Attributed
Context: Somehow not only for Christmas
But all the long year through,
The joy that you give to others
Is the joy that comes back to you.
And the more you spend in blessing
The poor and lonely and sad,
The more of your heart's possessing
Returns to make you glad.

Edna Ferber photo

“Christmas isn’t a season. It’s a feeling.”

Edna Ferber (1885–1968) Novelist, playwright

Variant: Christmas isn't a season. It's a feeling.

George Carlin photo

“The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Variant: The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.

Dr. Seuss photo

“Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before! What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. What if Christmas… perhaps… means a little bit more!”

Variant: "Maybe Christmas...", he thought, "... Doesn't come from a store."
"Maybe Christmas... perhaps... means a little bit more!"
Source: How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1957)

Francis Bacon photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Bob Hope photo
Ernest Hemingway photo
Garrison Keillor photo

“A lovely thing about Christmas is that it's compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

Source: Leaving Home‎ (1987), p. 184

Edith Wharton photo

“There are two ways of spreading light: to be
The candle or the mirror that reflects it.”

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer

"Vesalius in Zante (1564)", in North American Review (November 1902), p. 631
Variant: There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that receives it.

Eric Sevareid photo
Washington Irving photo
Christina Rossetti photo
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow photo
Dr. Seuss photo

“Maybe Christmas, the Grinch thought, doesn't come from a store.”

"Maybe Christmas... perhaps... means a little bit more!"
Source: How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1957)

Laura Ingalls Wilder photo
Bob Hope photo
Brené Brown photo

“Until we can receive with an open heart, we are never really giving with an open heart.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

Margaret Thatcher photo
Shirley Temple photo

“I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.”

Shirley Temple (1928–2014) American actress and diplomat

Quoted in The New Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations by Robert Andrews

“At Christmas play and make good cheer,
For Christmas comes but once a year.”

Thomas Tusser (1524–1580) English poet

"The Farmer's Daily Diet".
A Hundred Points of Good Husbandry (1557)

Irving Berlin photo

“I'm dreaming of a white Christmas,
Just like the ones I used to know.”

Irving Berlin (1888–1989) American composer

Song White Christmas.

Helen Keller photo

“The only real blind person at Christmas-time is he who has not Christmas in his heart.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

"Christmas in the Dark" in Ladies Home Journal (December 1906)
Context: The only real blind person at Christmas-time is he who has not Christmas in his heart. We sightless children had the best of eyes that day in our hearts and in our finger-tips. We were glad from the child's necessity of being happy. The blind who have outgrown the child's perpetual joy can be children again on Christmas Day and celebrate in the midst of them who pipe and dance and sing a new song!

B.C. Forbes photo
Laura Ingalls Wilder photo