Explore well-known and useful English quotes, phrases and sayings. Quotes in English with translations.
Source: Death in Venice and Other Tales
“When I read about the dangers of drinking, I gave up reading”
Variant: When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.
“We must not say that every mistake is a foolish one.”
Non enim omnis error stultitia est dicenda.
Book II, Chapter LII, section 90
De Divinatione – On Divination (44 BC)
“People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care”
Variant: No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care
“If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it.”
"Five to One" on the album Waiting for the Sun (1968)
Variant: Five to one, baby
One in five
No one here gets out alive
Context: Five to one, baby
One in five
No one here gets out alive, now
You get yours, baby
I'll get mine
Gonna make it, baby
If we try.
“Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god.”
Source: The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth
“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
“The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions.”
“We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey”
“Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
“He who has overcome his fears will truly be free.”
“Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens”
Variant: Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.
“What a difference it makes to come home to a child!”
“Attack the evil that is within yourself, rather than attacking the evil that is in others.”
“To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.”
“You do realize as you grow older that almost nobody knows what they are talking about.”
“Failure is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again.”
“Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.”
Earliest record is in a circular letter from Hessian Church minister Karl Lotz on 5 October 1944 and modified from a quote by Johanan ben Zakai according to [Landes, Richard Allen, Heaven on Earth: The varieties of the millennial experience, USA, Oxford University Press, 2011, 978-0-19-975359-8, https://books.google.com/books?id=seS-0JTykgoC&pg=PA48, 48]
Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Martin Luther / Disputed
Misattributed
“I am hopelessly in love with a memory.
An echo from another time, another place.”
“Don't use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry.”
“No man burdens his mind with small matters unless he has some very good reason for doing so.”
Source: A Study in Scarlet
Man verdirbt einen Jüngling am sichersten, wenn man ihn anleitet, den Gleichdenkenden höher zu achten, als den Andersdenkenden.
The Dawn, Sec. 297
“There is no doubt; even a rejection can be the shadow of a caress”.”
“When I'm hungry, I eat. When I'm thirsty, I drink. When I feel like saying something, I say it.”
Source: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
“He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.”
Book III, Ch. 13
Attributed
Source: The Complete Essays
“A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ.”
Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America
“My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder.”
“And you wish to be a poet; and you wish to be a lover.”
Source: The Waves
“No one has ever become poor by giving.”
Attributed to Anne Frank in various self-help books but always without citation.
Disputed
Source: diary of Anne Frank: the play
Source: All the King's Men (1946)
“A man's true character comes out when he's drunk.”
“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”
Source: The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin
“If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.”
“Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.”
“Your silence will not protect you.”
essay "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action", in Sister Outsider
Source: Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
This is probably the most famous of apparently apocryphal remarks attributed to Lincoln. Despite it being cited variously as from an 1856 speech, or a September 1858 speech in Clinton, Illinois, there are no known contemporary records or accounts substantiating that he ever made the statement. The earliest known appearance is October 29, 1886 in the Milwaukee Daily Journal http://anotherhistoryblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/fooling-people-earlier.html. It later appeared in the New York Times on August 26 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30817FF3E5413738DDDAF0A94D0405B8784F0D3 and August 27 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F00E15FF3E5413738DDDAE0A94D0405B8784F0D3, 1887. The saying was repeated several times in newspaper editorials later in 1887. In 1888 and, especially, 1889, the saying became commonplace, used in speeches, advertisements, and on portraits of Lincoln. In 1905 and later, there were attempts to find contemporaries of Lincoln who could recall Lincoln saying this. Historians have not, generally, found these accounts convincing. For more information see two articles in For the People: A Newsletter of the Abraham Lincoln Association, "'You Can Fool All of the People' Lincoln Never Said That", by Thomas F. Schwartz ( V. 5, #4, Winter 2003, p. 1 http://abrahamlincolnassociation.org/Newsletters/5-4.pdf) and "A New Look at 'You Can Fool All of the People'" by David B. Parker ( V. 7, #3, Autumn 2005, p. 1 http://abrahamlincolnassociation.org/Newsletters/7-3.pdf); also the talk page. The statement has also sometimes been attributed to P. T. Barnum, although no references to this have been found from the nineteenth century.
Variants:
You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.
You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
You can fool all the people some time, you can fool some of the people all of the time, but you can not fool all the people all the time.
Disputed
Source: Through Gates of Splendor
“To understand is to forgive.”
“We know not through our intellect but through our experience.”
“A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.”
volume I, chapter VI: "The Voyage", page 266 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=284&itemID=F1452.1&viewtype=image; letter to sister Susan Elizabeth Darwin (4 August 1836)
The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1887)
Source: The Life & Letters of Charles Darwin
“To be in company is not to be with someone, but to be in someone.”
Estar en compañía no es estar con alguien, sino estar en alguien.
Voces (1943)
The Conferences V.2 ( online http://books.google.com/books?id=k3CrvJJZkqEC&pg=PA44)
Was klein ist im Beginn wird oft am Ende überaus groß sein. Und so geschieht es, das wer im Anfange auch nur um ein Weniges von der Wahrheit abweicht, im Verlauf immer weiter und weiter und zu tausendmal größern Irrthümer fortgeführt wird.
On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle (1862)
As quoted in Freedom: A New Analysis (1954) by Maurice William Cranston, p. 112
“Patience is the art of hoping.”
La patience est l’art d’espérer.
Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 180.
“An unjust law is no law at all.”
On Free Choice Of The Will, Book 1, § 5
“Fortune favours the brave.”
Fortis fortuna adiuvat.
Variant translation: Fortune assists the brave.
Act I, scene 4, line 25 (203).
Cf. Virgil, Aeneid, Book X, line 284: "Audentes fortuna iuvat."
Phormio
“I was taught at school never to start a sentence without knowing the end of it.”
http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Printonly/Dirac.html
Source: 1930s- 1950s, The Practice of Management (1954), p. 387
“No burden is so heavy for a man to bear as a succession of happy days.”
Max Müller, as quoted in Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern English and Foreign Sources (1899) by James Wood
Misattributed
“We can never enter upon the path to virtue unless we have hope as our guide and companion.”
Letter to Demetrias
“One does not have to be a Marxist to know there is something very wrong in this society.”
4 POLITICAL THEORY AN CONSCIOUSNESS, Political Science Fiction, p. 231
Dirty truths (1996), first edition
“World-peace can be achieved when the power of love replaces the love of power.”
Words of Wisdom (2010)
Leonard Bernstein, statement of 1953, quoted in A Wonderful Life : 50 Eulogies to Lift the Spirit (2006) by Cyrus M. Copeland, p. 190
“Let us live – we must die.”
Vivamus, moriendum est.
Book II, Chapter VI; translation from Michael Winterbottom, Declamations of the Elder Seneca (London: Heinemann, 1974) vol. 1 p. 349
Some editions of Seneca prefer the reading Bibamus, moriendum est (Let us drink – we must die).
Controversiae
“No virtue is equal to the good of others and
no vice greater than hurting others.”
Tulsidas in "A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics", p. 37
“The death of one man is a just death, the death of two millions is a statistic.”
Aber das ist wohl so, weil ein einzelner immer der Tod ist — und zwei Millionen immer nur eine Statistik.
Der schwarze Obelisk (1956)
A variant of this quote "One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is just a statistic." has also been attributed to Joseph Stalin, but no source for this has been found. This version appeared in the English press not later than 1958. (Ремарк, Эрих Мария // Словарь современных цитат / составитель К. В. Душенко — Москва: изд-во «Эксмо», 2006)
“Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.”
"Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)"; similar expressions were used by others prior to Lennon's use of this line, and have been attributed to Betty Talmadge, Thomas La Mance, Margaret Millar, William Gaddis, and Lily Tomlin, but the earliest known published occurrence was the 1957 attribution of "Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans." to Allen Saunders in Reader's Digest, according to The Quote Verifier : Who Said What, Where, and When (2006) by Ralph Keyes
Lyrics, Double Fantasy (1980)
Variant: Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.
Variant: Life is what happens while you are making other plans.
“Anyone who doesn't believe in miracles isn't a realist.”
David Ben-Gurion, as quoted in Israel : Years of Crisis Years of Hope (1973) by Roman Frister, p. 45
Misattributed
“Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths.”
Source: Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1963), Ch. 1 "Science : Conjectures and Refutations", Section VII
“I have never regarded any man as my superior, either in my life outside or inside prison.”
Nelson Mandela on equaliy, From a letter to General Du Preez, Commissioner of Prisons, Written on Robben Island, Cape Town, South Africa (12 July 1976). Source: From Nelson Mandela By Himself: The Authorised Book of Quotations © 2010 by Nelson R. Mandela and The Nelson Mandela Foundation http://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/mini-site/selected-quotes
1970s
Source: Odes, CXLIII, in Hafiz of Shiraz: Selections from his Poems, translated from the Persian, by Herman Bicknell (1875), p. 197; quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 59
Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 184.
Source: 1990s and later, Managing for the Future: The 1990's and Beyond (1992), p. 139
“Suffering passes, but the fact of having suffered never passes.”
Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry, Volume 19, Association of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry., 1984 [Association of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry., 1984]
“Those who spend too fast never grow rich.”
Qui dépense trop n’est jamais riche.
La Maison du Chat-qui-pelote http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/La_Maison_du_chat-qui-pelote [At the Sign of the Cat and Racket] (1830), translated by Clara Bell
“In the end, today is forever, yesterday is still today, and tomorrow is already today.”
My Heart's in the Highlands (1939)
Excerpt from 2017 Personality Lecture 21. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9U5IHQWSZc
Personality Lectures
“Every reasonable human being should be a moderate Socialist.”
As quoted in The New York Times (18 June 1950); also in Thomas Mann: A Critical Study (1971) by R. J. Hollingdale, Ch. 2
“Fine words and an insinuating appearance are seldom associated with true virtue.”
Variant: Someone who is a clever speaker and maintains a 'too-smiley' face is seldom considered a humane person.
Source: The Analects, Chapter I
The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified
Tolkien in Oxford (1968) http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/writers/12237.shtml, a BBC 2 television documentary (at 21:49)
“Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.”
"The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether" (1845)
“Happiness is not pleasure — it is victory.”
See You at the Top (2000)
Discourses
Variant: ...none ought to be educated but the free;...
Book II, ch. 1.
