English quotes
English quotes with translation | page 25
Explore well-known and useful English quotes, phrases and sayings. Quotes in English with translations.
Source: VII, 8 (Penguin Classics edition of Meditations, translated by Maxwell Staniforth)
“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
“I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.”
As quoted in Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Time (1972) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 5
“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”
Misattributed
“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile — hoping it will eat him last.”
In Reader's Digest (December 1954).
Post-war years (1945–1955)
Variant: An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
“Truth is generally the best vindication against slander.”
Letter to Edwin Stanton (14 July 1864); published in Abraham Lincoln: A History (1890) by John Hay
1860s
“It was the possibility of darkness that made the day seem so bright.”
Source: Wolves of the Calla
Source: Man's Search for Meaning
“Is it better to out-monster the monster or to be quietly devoured?”
“Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, morphine or idealism.”
“I learned to walk as a baby and I haven't had a lesson since.”
“Everything has been figured out, except how to live.”
“Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.”
This is not a quote by Kerouac. It's a quote by CBS broadcaster Charles Kuralt who used to present a TV news segment called 'On the Road' (which is probably how the confusion arose). This particular statement by Kuralt was made in May 1996 to students of Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York: http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1298&dat=19960527&id=yf8yAAAAIBAJ&sjid=yQcGAAAAIBAJ&pg=3106,5606314
Misattributed
“Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.”
Variant: Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.
“The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.”
le mystère de l'amour est plus grand que le mystère de la mort.
Source: Salomé (1893)
“You can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.”
Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
“The painter has the Universe in his mind and hands.”
Recollection by Gilbert J. Greene, quoted in The Speaking Oak (1902) by Ferdinand C. Iglehart and Latest Light on Abraham Lincoln (1917) by Ervin S. Chapman
Posthumous attributions
“That which is done out of love is always beyond good and evil.”
“With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.”
“Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.”
“Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.”
“Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.”
Source: The Great Gatsby (1925), ch. 9
“If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads.”
“History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”
Origins unclear. Earliest known match in print comes from 1970, in a collection called “Neo Poems” by Canadian artist John Robert Colombo, who recalled reading it sometime in the 1960s. Twain did say "History never repeats itself, but the Kaleidoscopic combinations of the pictured present often seem to be constructed out of the broken fragments of antique legends." in the 1874 edition of “The Gilded Age: A Tale of To-Day”. A thematic precursor, "History May Not Repeat, But It Looks Alike", appears in a 1941 article by Chicago Tribune in Illinois. (Source: Quote Investigator https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/01/12/history-rhymes/)
Misattributed
marginal note in Moncure D. Conway's Sacred Anthology
quoted by Albert Bigelow Paine in Mark Twain: A Biography (1912)
“Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.”
Book II, Section VI ( translation http://archive.org/stream/aristotlespolit00aris#page/69/mode/1up by Benjamin Jowett)
Politics
Context: One would have thought that it was even more necessary to limit population than property; and that the limit should be fixed by calculating the chances of mortality in the children, and of sterility in married persons. The neglect of this subject, which in existing states is so common, is a never-failing cause of poverty among the citizens; and poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.
Royal Variety Performance in London (4 November 1963) attended by Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, and Princess Margaret. Of this incident Mark Hertsgaard reports in A Day in the Life: The Music and Artistry of the Beatles (1995): "The remark provoked warm laughter and applause, and was greeted with profound relief by Beatles manager Brian Epstein, who had feared Lennon would make good on his pre-performance threat to tell them to "rattle their fuckin' jewelry."
“History is written by the victors.”
“Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.”
“I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?”
No source in Hemingway's works has been found. May have originated in a 2000 post to the Usenet group alt.support.depression. link https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/alt.support.depression/wYH4aCNHyp4/_d50yuXTeHsJ
Disputed
No published occurrence of such an attribution has yet been located prior to one in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre — Band 3 http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2411/pg2411.html by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Disputed
Variant: Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.
“I imagine hell like this: Italian punctuality, German humour and English wine.”
“Life is the dancer and you are the dance.”
A New Earth (2005)
Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
“Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.”
Variant: Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six month.
“The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention.”
Letter Seven (14 May 1904)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)
Variant: For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been given to us, the ultimate, the final problem and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation.
Source: The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
Context: People have (with the help of conventions) oriented all their solutions toward the easy and toward the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must hold to what is difficult; everything alive holds to it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself in its own way and is characteristically and spontaneously itself, seeks at all costs to be so and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must hold to what is difficult is a certainty that will not forsake us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it.
To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.
“Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.”
Dinner was soon followed by tea and coffee, a ten miles' drive home allowed no waste of hours; and from the time of their sitting down to table, it was a quick succession of busy nothings till the carriage came to the door, and Mrs. Norris, having fidgeted about, and obtained a few pheasants' eggs and a cream cheese from the housekeeper, and made abundance of civil speeches to Mrs. Rushworth, was ready to lead the way.
Misattributed
Source: Said by Fanny Price in a 1999 adaptation of Mansfield Park. Actual quote:
“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.”
Source: A Moveable Feast (1964), Ch. 2
Context: I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, "Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know."
“You can judge a man's true character by the way he treats his fellow animals.”
"Keep Moving from this Mountain" http://www5.spelman.edu/about_us/news/pdf/70622_messenger.pdf – Founders Day Address at the Sisters Chapel, Spelman College (11 April 1960)
1960s
As quoted in The Reader's Digest, Vol. 37 (1940), p. 90; no specific source given.
Disputed
Variant: In all affairs – love, religion, politics, or business – it's a healthy idea, now and then, to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
“All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then Success is sure.”
Mark Twain's Notebook, 1887
Letter to Cordelia Welsh Foote (Cincinnati), 2 December 1887. Letter reprinted http://www.twainquotes.com/Success.html in Benjamin De Casseres's When Huck Finn Went Highbrow https://www.worldcat.org/title/when-huck-finn-went-highbrow/oclc/2514292 (1934)
Source: Unpopular Essays
“The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.”
Source: The Soul of Man Under Socialism, and Selected Critical Prose
“What do you think about me is not my business the important thing is what I think about myself…”
Source: Rich Dad's Cashflow Quadrant: Rich Dad's Guide to Financial Freedom
Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. XV
Misquoted as "Why shouldn’t truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense." by Laurence J. Peter in "Peter’s Quotations: Ideas for Our Time", among many others.
Following the Equator (1897)
Source: Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
“I was born lost and take no pleasure in being found.”
Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America
Mrs. Arbuthnot http://books.google.com/books?id=RHkWAAAAYAAJ&q=%22Children+begin+by+loving+their+parents+after+a+time%22+%22they+judge+them+rarely+if+ever+do+they+forgive+them%22&pg=PA187#v=onepage, Act IV
A Woman of No Importance (1893)
Variant: Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
“As a day well spent procures a happy sleep, so a life well employed procures a happy death.”
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
Not by Twain, but from Edward Abbey's A Voice Crying In The Wilderness (1989).
Misattributed
“Where you stumble and fall, there you will find gold.”
“When you're drowning you don't think, You just scream.”
“The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.”
“Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.”
1950s
Context: In matters concerning truth and justice there can be no distinction between big problems and small; for the general principles which determine the conduct of men are indivisible. Whoever is careless with truth in small matters cannot be trusted in important affairs.
(1955) as quoted in Albert Einstein: Historical and Cultural Perspectives (1997) ed. , p. 388, from The Centennial Symposium in Jerusalem (1979)
“Once you choose hope, anything's possible.”
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Variant: All art is immoral.
“You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.”
B 730; Variant translation: All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.
Variant: All human knowledge begins with intuitions, proceeds from thence to concepts, and ends with ideas.
Source: Critique of Pure Reason (1781; 1787)
“When angry, count four. When very angry, swear.”
“I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.”
As quoted in Oscar Wilde : An Idler's Impression (1917) http://books.google.com/books?id=ddAVAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=edgar+saltus+wilde&cd=3#v=snippet&q=satisfied&f=false by Edgar Saltus, p. 20
“Children find everything in nothing, men find nothing in everything.”
Source: Zibaldone (2013) trans. Kathleen Baldwin et al., [527] ISBN 978-0374296827
Variant: I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.
“Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things.”
“Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius”
“You'll find that life is still worthwhile, if you just smile.”
Lyrics to "Smile", written by John Turner and Geoffrey Claremont Parsons in 1954, the music of which was composed by Chaplin in 1936. - "Smile" music, as used in Modern Times (1936) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps6ck1ejoAw - "Smile" tribute to Chaplin, as sung by Michael Jackson http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iu-rLA4POkI
Misattributed
Context: Smile though your heart is aching
Smile even though its breaking
When there are clouds in the sky, you'll get by
If you smile with your fear and sorrow
Smile and maybe tomorrow
You'll find that life is still worthwhile If you just
Light up your face with gladness
Hide every trace of sadness
Although a tear may be ever so near
That's the time you must keep on trying
Smile, what's the use of crying?
You'll find that life is still worthwhile.
“A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
Source: Essays of Three Decades (1942)
Variant: Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.
“There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.”
1960s, (1963)