English quotes
English quotes with translation | page 2
Explore well-known and useful English quotes, phrases and sayings. Quotes in English with translations.
“Art is to console those who are broken by life.”
“There is no death without life. Therefore, death depends entirely on life.”
“I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.”
“What is to give light must endure burning.”
“All the gods, all the heavens, all the hells, are within you.”
“Believe you can and you're halfway there.”
“I think a lot, but I don't say much.”
Source: The Diary of a Young Girl
“A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.”
A line written by Ono many years before, and quoted by Lennon in December 1980, as quoted in All We Are Saying : The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono (2000) by John Lennon, Yōko Ono, David Sheff, p. 16.
Source: Grapefruit: A Book of Instructions and Drawings
“There are no mistakes, only happy accidents.”
“I am still far from being what I want to be, but with God's help I shall succeed.”
“Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.”
Georges Duhamel in THE HEART'S DOMAIN (1919). As it was composed in French, the wording in English may vary in translation. Theodore Geisel / Dr. Seuss was born in 1904, and would have been about 15 years old at the time that it was published. The full text can be found at the link below: We do not know the true value of our moments until they have undergone the test of memory. Like the images the photographer plunges into a golden bath, our sentiments take on color; and only then, after that recoil and that trans-figuration, do we understand their real meaning and enjoy them in all their tranquil splendor.
Misattributed
“You can close your eyes if you want. Some things are less scary.”
The Bulletin, San Francisco, California, December 2, 1916, part 2, p. 1.
Also included in Jack London’s Tales of Adventure, ed. Irving Shepard, Introduction, p. vii (1956)
“Tell me how you read and I'll tell you who you are.”
“Keep smiling, because life is a beautiful thing and there's so much to smile about.”
“If you can make it through the night, there's a brighter day.”
Variant: For every dark night, there's a brighter day.
“Love should not be polluted with friendship.”
Source: Arch of Triumph: A Novel of a Man Without a Country
“There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking it-self is dangerous.”
“Music is like a dream. One that I cannot hear.”
Conversations (January 1804)
“Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.”
Source: Heliogabalus
“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”
“Some mothers will do anything for their children, except let them be themselves.”
Cut It Out (2004)
Source: Wall and Piece
“A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”
Variants: One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is just a statistic.
A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.
When one dies, it is a tragedy. When a million die, it is a statistic.
In Портрет тирана (1981) (Portrait of a Tyrant), Soviet historian Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko attributes the following version to Stalin: "When one man dies it's a tragedy. When thousands die it's statistics." This is the alleged response of Stalin during the 1943 Tehran conference when Churchill objected to an early opening of a second front in France.<!-- The book appears to have a footnote sourceing the claim, but I couldn't access it. Could someone please try to scare up a paper copy and have a look at footnote 188? -->
In her review "Mustering Most Memorable Quips" of Konstantin Dushenko's 1997 Dictionary of Modern Quotations (Словарь современных цитат: 4300 ходячих цитат и выражений ХХ века, их источники, авторы, датировка), Julia Solovyova states: "Russian historians have no record of the lines, 'Death of one man is a tragedy. Death of a million is a statistic,' commonly attributed by English-language dictionaries to Josef Stalin."
This quotation may originate from "Französischer Witz" (1925) by Kurt Tucholsky: "Darauf sagt ein Diplomat vom Quai d'Orsay: «Der Krieg? Ich kann das nicht so schrecklich finden! Der Tod eines Menschen: das ist eine Katastrophe. Hunderttausend Tote: das ist eine Statistik!»" ("To which a Quai d'Orsay diplomat replies: «The war? I can't find it so terrible! The death of one man: that is a catastrophe. One hundred thousand deaths: that is a statistic!»")
Another possible source or intermediary may be the concluding words of chapter 8 of the 1956 novel The Black Obelisk by Erich Maria Remarque: "Aber das ist wohl so, weil ein einzelner immer der Tod ist — und zwei Millionen immer nur eine Statistik." ("But probably the reason is that one dead man is death—and two million are only a statistic." 1958 Crest Book reprint)
Mary Soames (daughter of Churchill) claims to have overheard Stalin deliver a variant of the quote in immediate postwar Berlin (Remembrance Sunday Andrew Marr interview BBC 2011) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hP2tpw9XEw
See also Jean Rostand, Thoughts of a Biologist, 1939: "Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god."
In an interview given for the 1983 three-part documentary Der Prozeß by Norddeutscher Rundfunk on the Third Majdanek trial, Simon Wiesenthal attributes the quote to the unpublished auto-biography of Adolf Eichmann. According to Wiesenthal, Eichmann had been asked by another member of the Reich Main Security Office during WWII what they should answer would they be questioned after the war about the millions of dead Jews they were responsible for, to which Eichmann according to his own testimony had replied with the quote.
Misattributed
Variant: The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.
“During your life, never stop dreaming. No one can take away your dreams”
“I wish I could throw off the thoughts which poison my happiness.”
As quoted in Chopin.
Variant translation: I wish I could throw off the thoughts which poison my happiness. And yet I take a kind of pleasure in indulging them.
Variant: I wish I could throw off the thoughts that poison my happiness, and yet I love to indulge in them;
Source: Chopin's Letters
“I will either find a way, or make one.”
Aut viam inveniam aut faciam.
Latin proverb, most commonly attributed to Hannibal in response to his generals who had declared it impossible to cross the Alps with elephants; English translation as quoted in Salesmanship and Business Efficiency (1922) by James Samuel Knox, p. 27.
[BBC Sport, Cristiano Ronaldo: I'm the best player in the world, 5 November 2015, 4 February 2018, http://www.bbc.com/sport/football/34737914]
In an interview with the BBC ahead of the release of Ronaldo.
“It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful.”
The Nine Satanic Sins (1987)
“How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.”
“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life — It goes on.”
As quoted in The Harper Book of Quotations (1993) edited by Robert I. Fitzhenry, p. 261
General sources
Variant: In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.
“It’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.”
Variant: Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.
“The wonderful things in life are the things you do, not the things you have.”
“I never said to be like me, I say to be like you and make a difference.”
Variant: I never said to be like me, I say be yourself and make a difference.
Variant: Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside while still alive. Never surrender.
“Do not take life too seriously – you will never get out of it alive.”
Source: A Thousand & One Epigrams: Selected from the Writings of Elbert Hubbard (1911), p. 74
“The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night.”
“Every one is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.”
Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. LXVI
Following the Equator (1897)
“I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees.”
“Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.”
“No one is perfect in this imperfect world.”
Congo, My Country
“Fear is the true enemy, the only enemy.”
Attributed implicitly to Sun Tzu by "William Riker" in the episode The Last Outpost of the TV program Star Trek: The Next Generation, but no source for this quote predates the episode's airing in 1987.
Misattributed
“A TV evening with the right person can be more erotic than sex with the wrong one. ”
“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.”
Variant: I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
“Love is so short and forgetting is so long.”
Es tan corto el amor y tan largo el olvido.
"Tonight I Can Write" (Puedo Escribir), XX, p. 51.
Variant: Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
Source: Veinte Poemas de Amor y una Canción Desesperada (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair) (1924)
“Open your eyes, look within. Are you satisfied with the life you're living?”
"In Search of a Majority: An Address" (Feb 1960); reprinted in Baldwin, "Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobody_Knows_My_Name (1961)
“If my art has nothing to do with people's pain and sorrow, what is 'art' for?”
“My body is my journal, and my tattoos are my story.”
“Do one thing every day that scares you.”
“Wanting to be someone else is a waste of who you are”
Variant: Wanting to be someone else is the waste of who you are
“The only way to abolish war is to make peace heroic.”
James Hinton, Philosophy and Religion: Selections from the Manuscripts of the Late James Hinton, ed. Caroline Haddon, (2nd ed., London: 1884), [//books.google.com/books?id=DpxRAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA267 p. 267].
Widely misattributed on the internet to Dewey, who actually attributes it to Hinton in Human Nature and Conduct: An Introduction to Social Psychology (New York: 1922), [//books.google.com/books?id=Ws0RAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA115 p. 115].
Misattributed
“If you're going through hell, keep going.”
True origin unknown. Finest Hour described it as "not verifiable in any of the 50 million published words by and about him" ( Finest Hour, The Journal of Winston Churchill, Number 145, Winter 2009–10, p. 9 https://www.winstonchurchill.org/images/finesthour/vol.01%20no.145.pdf). A similar quotation: "If you're going through hell, don't stop!" is "plausibly attributed" to Oregon self-help author and counselor Douglas Bloch (1990), according to Quote Investigator.
Misattributed
Variant: If you're going through hell, keep going
Source: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/09/14/keep-going/
“It isn't what we say or think that defines us, but what we do.”
Variant: It is not what we think or feel that makes us who we are. It is what we do. Or fail to do...
Source: Sense and Sensibility
“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”
“Life would be tragic if it weren't funny.”
As quoted in "The Science of Second-Guessing", The New York Times (12 December 2004)
“Pooh, how do you spell love?' 'You don't spell love Piglet, you feel it”
Variant: How do you spell love?
You don't spell it, you feel it.
Quoted in Bernard Weintraub, "Playboy Interview: Johnny Depp," Playboy (May 2004)
Context: I do have an affinity for damaged people, in life, in roles. I don't know why. We're all damaged in our own way. Nobody's perfect. I think we are all somewhat screwy, every single one of us.
Fictional attribution in the movie The Emperor's Club (2002), given by Kevin Kline (as William Hundert); also attributed to Diogenes, without sources; no published occurrences of this statement prior to the movie have been located in any of the Aristophanes Plays or Fragments.
Misattributed
Source: IMDb, "Memorable quotes for The Emperor's Club" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0283530/quotes, Internet Movie Database, www.imdb.com
Source: Two pages attributing it to Diogenes: http://www.prohibitionists.org/Background/Party_Platform/quickquotes/QQ-education.htm http://www.ryanbalton.com/funstuff/forb_seniorquotes.htm
Variant: You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.
“He who does nothing makes no mistakes; he who makes no mistakes learns nothing.”
“A leader leads by example not by force.”
Source: The Art of War, Chapter IX · Movement and Development of Troops
“On film you put all your energies into a single glance. ”
“If you're afraid to fail, then you're probably going to fail.”
“Action may not always bring happiness but there is no happiness without action.”
Books, Coningsby (1844), Lothair (1870)
Variant: Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.
“All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.”
“Music touches us emotionally, where words alone can't.”
“Our stories may be singular, but our destination is shared.”
Source: The Diary of a Young Girl