Explore well-known and useful English quotes, phrases and sayings. Quotes in English with translations.
“A woman should soften but not weaken a man.”
“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
Often attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt without an original source in her writings, for example in the introduction to It Seems to Me : Selected Letters of Eleanor Roosevelt (2001) by Leonard C. Schlup and Donald W. Whisenhunt, p. 2 http://books.google.com/books?id=UeFWjTMcLZYC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA2#v=onepage&q&f=false. But archivists have not been able to find the quote in any of her writings, see the comment from Ralph Keyes in The Quote Verifier above.
Disputed
Noah Brooks, scribe for the Sacramento Union, writing in the Harper’s Weekly for July 1865, 3 months after Lincoln had died, reported that the Lincoln once said this, at an unspecified date; as reported in "Did Abraham Lincoln Actually Say That Obama Quote?" by James M. Cornelius, The Daily Beast (9 August 2012) http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/08/did-abraham-lincoln-actually-say-that-obama-quote.html
Posthumous attributions
“We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all.”
“When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.”
“If God were small enough to be understood, He would not be big enough to be worshipped.”
“Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.”
"Fifth Avenue, Uptown: a Letter from Harlem" in Esquire (July 1960); republished in Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son (1961)
As quoted in The Beacon Book of Quotations by Women (1992) by Rosalie Maggio, p. 130
“We should all start to live before we get too old. Fear is stupid. So are regrets.”
“Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.”
The Stakes of Diplomacy http://books.google.com/books?id=cyFMAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Where+all+think+alike+no+one+thinks+very+much%22&pg=PA51#v=onepage (1915)
“"Classic." A book which people praise and don't read.”
Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. XXV
Following the Equator (1897)
“The only man who makes no mistakes is the man who never does anything.”
As quoted by Jacob A. Riis in Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen (1904), chapter XVI A Young Men's Hero http://www.bartleby.com/206/16.html
1900s
“I'm not anti-social. I'm just not social.”
“I accept chaos, I'm not sure whether it accepts me.”
“I remember awakening one morning and finding everything smeared with the color of forgotten love.”
Source: What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire
“America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.”
“Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.”
“Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
Variant: Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
“If you don't know where you're going, any road'll take you there.”
“We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.”
Source: Essays, Speeches & Public Letters
“I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don't have as many people who believe it.”
Books, Brain Droppings (1997)
A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated (1894)
14.
Meditations Divine and Moral (1664)
Source: The Works of Anne Bradstreet
Variant: I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
Source: Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615)
Context: I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.
Context: I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.<!-- ¶22
“I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.”
“I'd trade all my tomorrows for one single yesterday.”
“Whatever you're meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.”
“Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.”
“Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions.”
“Better to reign in Hell, than to serve in Heaven.”
Variant: Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.
Source: Paradise Lost
“No man is good enough to govern any woman without her consent.”
II.293, maxim 358 http://books.google.kz/books?id=Nl-vaAdJD3MC&pg=PA293&dq=%22In+the+mountains+of+truth+you+will+never+climb+in+vain%22&hl=en
Human, All Too Human (1878)
“Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.”
Source: Pablo Picasso: Metamorphoses of the Human Form : Graphic Works, 1895-1972
“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”
Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”
Variant: For the first time he perceived that if you want to keep a secret you must also hide it from yourself.
Source: 1984
“It takes a very long time to become young.”
On met très longtemps à devenir jeune.
As quoted by Jean Cocteau The Hand of a Stranger (Journal d'un Inconnu). Horizon Press. 1959 [1953]. http://books.google.com/books?id=HxBJAQAAIAAJ
1950s
“Good or ill, life is life; you only realize that when you have to risk it.”
Source: The Black Obelisk
“No one is free, even the birds are chained to the sky.”
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
“Do not look for my heart any more; the beasts have eaten it.”
Ne cherchez plus mon cœur; des monstres l’ont mangé.
"Causerie" [Conversation] http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Fleurs_du_mal/1857/Causerie
Les fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil) (1857)
Source: Les Fleurs du Mal
“Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends. --Bernard, The Waves”
“No person has the right to rain on your dreams.”
“[Speaking of computers] But they are useless. They can only give you answers.”
As discussed in this entry from Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/11/05/computers-useless/#more-2932, the origin seems to be the article "Pablo Picasso: A Composite Interview" by William Fifield which appeared in The Paris Review 32, Summer-Fall 1964, and collected a number of interviews Fifield had done with Picasso.
Common later variant: "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." This variant seems to have arisen in the 1980s, the earliest known appearance in a book is Herman Feshbach, "Reflections on the Microprocessor Revolution: A Physicist's Viewpoint", in Man and Technology (1983), ed. Bruce M. Adkins, where the attribution is described as "rumoured". http://books.google.com/books?id=9EohAQAAIAAJ&q=Picasso
1960s
“I drink much less than most people think, and I think much more than most people would believe.”
Source: Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967
“We are each of us angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by embracing one another.”
“The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries.”
“Love is the flower you've got to let grow.”
Source: Lyrics, Mind Games (1973)
Context: We all been playing those mind games forever
Some kinda druid dudes lifting the veil.
Doing the mind guerrilla,
Some call it magic — the search for the grail.
Love is the answer and you know that for sure.
Love is a flower, you got to let it — you got to let it grow.
“Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.”
La inspiración existe, pero tiene que encontrarte trabajando.
Attributed from posthumous publications
Source: Tomás R. Villasante (1994), Las ciudades hablan: identidades y movimientos sociales en seis metrópolis latinoamericanas. p. 264.
"The Prevention of Literature" (1946)
Source: 1984
Context: Totalitarianism, however, does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud. Such a society, no matter how long it persists, can never afford to become either tolerant or intellectually stable. It can never permit either the truthful recording of facts or the emotional sincerity that literary creation demands. But to be corrupted by totalitarianism one does not have to live in a totalitarian country. The mere prevalence of certain ideas can spread a kind of poison that makes one subject after another impossible for literary purposes. Wherever there is an enforced orthodoxy — or even two orthodoxies, as often happens — good writing stops. This was well illustrated by the Spanish civil war. To many English intellectuals the war was a deeply moving experience, but not an experience about which they could write sincerely. There were only two things that you were allowed to say, and both of them were palpable lies: as a result, the war produced acres of print but almost nothing worth reading.
“The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.”
Source: The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde
“All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal.”
“Some of the worst mistakes in my life were haircuts”
“To live fully, we must learn to use things and love people, and not love things and use people.”
“A house is not a home until it has a dog.”
Variant: To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others.
Source: Unlimited Power (1986), p. 237
“Sometimes glass glitters more than diamonds because it has more to prove.”
Source: The Truth
“In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.”
“There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure truth.”
“One does not sell the earth upon which the people walk.”
As quoted in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1970) by Dee Brown, Ch. 12
“The criterion of truth is that it works even if nobody is prepared to acknowledge it.”
Source: The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science (1962), Chapter 5: On Some Popular Errors Concerning the Scope and Method of Economics, § 9 : The Belief in the Omnipotence of Thought
“There is only one tragedy in the end, not to have been a saint.”
In Catholic Christianity: A Complete Catechism of Catholic Beliefs Based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church by Peter Kreeft
Catholic Christianity: A Complete Catechism of Catholic Beliefs Based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Ignatius Press, 2001 https://books.google.com/books?id=VZ-xgfJkNNgC&pg=PA89&dq=%22There+is+only+one+tragedy+in+the+end,+not+to+have+been+a+saint%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAGoVChMIrLb4nOL6yAIVhjk-Ch1XSQVB#v=onepage&q=%22There%20is%20only%20one%20tragedy%20in%20the%20end%2C%20not%20to%20have%20been%20a%20saint%22&f=false
“As the thing more perfect is,
The more it feels of pleasure and of pain.”
Canto VI, lines 107–108 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno
“No one is able to rule unless he is also able to be ruled.”
nemo autem regere potest nisi qui et regi.
De Ira (On Anger): Book 2, cap. 15, line 4
Compare with the following : No man ruleth safely but that he is willingly ruled.
From The Imitation of Christ, Liber I, cap. 20 (Of the Love of Solitude and Silence), line 2 : by Thomas à Kempis (1380-1471).
Moral Essays
Online tweet, in response to an extremely depressed person contemplating https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/595148783056527360?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.etonline.com%2Fnews%2F163965_jk_rowling_sends_beautiful_message_to_fan_who_wants_to_finally_give_up%2F suicide, as quoted in "J.K. Rowling Sends Beautiful Message to Fan Who Wants to 'Finally Give Up'" by Alex Ungerman ET Online (5 May 2015) http://www.etonline.com/news/163965_jk_rowling_sends_beautiful_message_to_fan_who_wants_to_finally_give_up/
2010s
As quoted in Marry Your Muse : Making a Lasting Commitment to Your Creativity (1997) by Jan Phillips, p. 75
On temptation - "'ATTRIBUTING THE SATELLITES SUCCESS TO ME IS BLASPHEMY' – T.B. JOSHUA" http://www.modernghana.com/print/247180/1/attributing-the-satellites-success-to-me-is-blasph.html Modern Ghana (November 4 2009)
