Explore well-known and useful English quotes, phrases and sayings. Quotes in English with translations.
“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.”
“You'll never achieve real success unless you like what you're doing.”
“Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.”
Variant: Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.
“Dripping water hollows out stone, not through force but through persistence.”
“The human race has only one really effective weapon and that is laughter.”
“We can do no great things; only small things with great love.(mother Teresa)”
Source: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
Cecily, Act II
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
“If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.”
Variant: If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.
“A legal kiss is never as good as a stolen one.”
"A Wife's Confession"
“All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.”
As quoted in Angels in the workplace: stories and inspirations for creating a new world of work (1999) by Melissa Giovagnoli
Attributed
“I am not young enough to know everything.”
Variant: I am not young enough to know everything.
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”
Variant: Without a struggle, there can be no progress.
“Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut!”
From a set of "rules for life" sent to publisher Charles Scribner IV; quoted in Scribner's memoir In the Company of Writers (New York: Scribner, 1991), p. 64 https://books.google.com/books?id=yYdHGtlgIsYC&pg=PA64&dq=hemingway+%22rules+for+life%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj-zvyfgNDMAhUJ_mMKHU6zDrYQ6AEIIzAB#v=onepage&q=%20%22rules%20for%20life%22&f=false
“I would rather be a little nobody, then to be a evil somebody.”
“The nicest thing for me is sleep, then at least I can dream.”
“Let nothing dim the light that shines from within”
Variant: Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.
“Art is the proper task of life.”
“I've had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.”
Variant: I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.
“One mistake does not have to rule a person's entire life.”
Source: Any Minute
“How can I go forward when I don't know which way I'm facing?”
Lyrics, Imagine (1971 album)
Variant: How can I give love when I don't know what it is I'm giving?
"How?" (song)
“The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.”
“Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.”
As quoted in Third and Possibly the Best 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said (1987) by Robert Byrne, #40
“When words leave off, music begins.”
As quoted in Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Time (1977) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 343
“Strength lies in differences, not in similarities”
“Happiness depends upon ourselves”
An interpretative gloss of Aristotle's position in Nicomachean Ethics book 1 section 9, tacitly inserted by J. A. K. Thomson in his English translation The Ethics of Aristotle (1955). The original Greek at Book I 1099b.29 http://perseus.uchicago.edu/perseus-cgi/citequery3.pl?dbname=GreekFeb2011&getid=0&query=Arist.%20Eth.%20Nic.%201099b.25, reads ὁμολογούμενα δὲ ταῦτ’ ἂν εἴη καὶ τοῖς ἐν ἀρχῇ, which W. D. Ross translates fairly literally as [a]nd this will be found to agree with what we said at the outset. Thomson's much freer translation renders the same passage thus: [t]he conclusion that happiness depends upon ourselves is in harmony with what I said in the first of these lectures; the words "that happiness depends upon ourselves" were added by Thomson to clarify what "the conclusion" is, but they do not appear in the original Greek of Aristotle. Rackham's earlier English translation added a similar gloss, but averted confusion by confining it to a footnote.
Disputed
Variant: Happiness depends upon ourselves
Source: See http://www.mikrosapoplous.gr/aristotle/nicom1b.htm#I9 for the original Greek and Ross's translation; Thomson's translation can be viewed on Google Books https://books.google.com/books?id=9SFrNWmO654C&dq=%22happiness+depends+upon+ourselves%22+aristotle&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22happiness+depends+upon+ourselves%22+.
Source: Rackham's translation of this passage is available here http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0054%3Abook%3D1%3Achapter%3D9%3Asection%3D8
“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.”
Source: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
“Invisible threads are the strongest ties.”
“Art is never finished, only abandoned.”
Variant: Art is never finished, only abandoned.
Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young (1894)
Variant: The only way to atone for being occasionally a little over-dressed is by being always absolutely over-educated
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest
Context: The only way to atone for being occasionally a little over-dressed is by being always absolutely over-educated.
“DON'T THINK OF IT AS DYING, said Death. JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.”
Source: Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
“I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.”
Source: The Innocents Abroad (1869), Ch. 7
#124
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)
Source: Man and Superman
“The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order.”
1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)
“God created war so that Americans would learn geography.”
“Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get.”
“To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.”
“Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.”
Source: The Wild Palms
“The mistakes I've made are dead to me. But I can't take back the things I never did.”
Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), p. 309
Variant: When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive-to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.
Source: Meditations
“Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.”
Variant: And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things.
Source: I Shall Wear Midnight
Source: La Fin de Chéri (The Last of Cheri) (1926)
“Friendship is Love without wings.”
L'Amitié est l'Amour sans Ailes, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“There's nothing wrong with not understanding yourself.”
Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
“I don’t say we all ought to misbehave. But we ought to look as if we could”
More Maxims of Mark (1927) edited by Merle Johnson
“After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands.”
After December 6, 1845
Journals (1838-1859)
Source: Walden
“There is only one success … to be able to spend your life in your own way.”
Where the Blue Begins (1922)
“My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water.”
Source: Notebook
“If you don't turn your life into a story, you just become a part of someone else's story.”
Source: The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
Variant: Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”
These are paraphrases of Muir's quote from My First Summer in the Sierra (1911) - the actual quote is listed above: "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe." See Sierra Club explanation http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/misquotes.aspx.
Misattributed
Variant: Tug on anything at all and you'll find it connected to everything else in the universe.
Variant: When we tug at a single thing in nature, we find it attached to the rest of the world.
“There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.”
“If you have enough book space, I don't want to talk to you.”
“My wish is that you may be loved to the point of madness.”
Source: What is Surrealism?: Selected Writings
“You can't measure the mutual affection of two human beings by the number of words they exchange.”
Identity (1998), p. 78
“Of course it's possible to love a human being if you don't know them too well.”
“It is not that I'm so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer.”
Variant: It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.
Source: Raising Positive Kids in a Negative World
“There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.”
Attributed to Disraeli by Mark Twain in "Chapters from My Autobiography — XX", North American Review No. DCXVIII (JULY 5, 1907) http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19987. His attribution is considered unreliable, and the actual origin is uncertain, with one of the earliest known publications of such a phrase being that of Leonard H. Courtney: see Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Misattributed
Variant: .. the heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and [that] thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past
Source: Love in the Time of Cholera
“Faith is taking the first step even when you can't see the whole staircase.”
Variant: Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.
Source: Let Nobody Turn Us Around: Voices on Resistance, Reform, and Renewal an African American Anthology
“To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.”
“A thought, even a possibility, can shatter and transform us.”
“Let us accept truth, even when it surprises us and alters our views.”
Source: Letters Of George Sand
“The fuckers. There, I feel better. God-damned human race. There, I feel better.”
Source: The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship
“Soon I'll find the right words, they'll be very simple.”
Some of the Dharma (1997)
Source: Sometimes paraphrased as "One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple" or "Someday I will find the right words … ", and sometimes misattributed to The Dharma Bums rather than to Some of the Dharma.
“It doesn’t matter what you say you believe - it only matters what you do.”
Source: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
1960s, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (1967-1969)
Context: Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.
“One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
