English quotes
English quotes with translation | page 30
Explore well-known and useful English quotes, phrases and sayings. Quotes in English with translations.
Source: The Alchemist (1988), p. 18.
“My tastes are simple: I am easily satisfied with the best.”
Variant: I am easily satisfied with the very best.
Variant: It isn't what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about.
Source: How to Win Friends and Influence People
“The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for.”
“Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.”
“Your attitude, more than your aptitude, will determine your altitude.”
Failing Forward: How to Make the Most of Your Mistakes
“Life always waits for some crisis to occur before revealing itself at its most brilliant.”
Source: Eleven Minutes (2003), p. 50.
“He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often came back with two.”
Source: Les Misérables
“Never memorize something that you can look up.”
Variant: Never memorize something that you can look up.
Variant: I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat was threadbare - there were holes at his elbows; the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul.
Source: Les Misérables
“If you want to be happy, be.”
As quoted in Wisdom for the Soul : Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing (2006) by Larry Chang, p. 352; this statement appears in late 20th century inspirational books, but with no known citation to original material by Tolstoy.
Disputed
Source: The Analects, Chapter IV
“The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.”
“You cannot always control what goes on outside. But you can always control what goes on inside.”
“If my mind can conceive it; and my heart can believe it — then I can achieve it.”
Similar to a quote by Jesse Jackson, which is in turn a modification of a quote by Napoleon Hill: "Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve."
Misattributed
Source: The Soul of a Butterfly: Reflections on Life's Journey
“The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them.”
Variant: simple things are the most valuable and only wise people appreciate them".
Source: The Alchemist
“Things work out best for those who make the best of the way things work out.”
Variant: Things turn out best for those who make best of how things turn out.
“Friends… they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams.”
Source: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
“Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.”
“Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.”
Source: On the Road
“I love Humanity but I hate humans”
A comment of Einstein's recalled by John Wheeler in Albert Einstein: His influence on physics, philosophy and politics edited by Peter C. Aichelburg, Roman Ulrich Sexl, and Peter Gabriel Bergmann (1979), p. 202
Attributed in posthumous publications
Variant: I love to travel, but I hate to arrive.
“I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.”
Attributed in The Encarta Book of Quotations http://books.google.com/books?id=Af84fBmzmVYC&pg=PA305&dq=Belgenland to an interview on the Belgenland (December 1930), which was the ship on which he arrived in New York that month. According to The Ultimate Quotable Einstein by Alice Calaprice (2010), p. 18 http://books.google.com/books?id=G_iziBAPXtEC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA18#v=onepage&q&f=false, the quote also appears as "Aphorism, 1945-1946" in the Einstein Archives 36-570. Calaprice speculates that "perhaps it was recalled later and inserted into the archives under the later date." According to a snippet on Google Books, the phrase '"I never think of the future," he said. "It comes soon enough."' appears in The Literary Digest: Volume 107 on p. 29, in an article titled "We May Not 'Get' Relativity, But We Like Einstein" from 27 December 1930 http://books.google.com/books?id=T0A_AAAAMAAJ&q=%22we+like+einstein%22#search_anchor. The snippet http://books.google.com/books?id=T0A_AAAAMAAJ&q=belgenland+%22I+never+think+of+the+future%22+%22it+comes+soon+enough%22#search_anchor also discusses the "welcome to Professor Einstein on the Belgenland" in New York
1930s
The Man Upstairs (1914)
Source: The Man Upstairs and Other Stories
“The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.”
“The path to success is to take massive, determined action.”
“If I'd observed all the rules I'd never have got anywhere.”
Variant: If I'd observed all the rules, I'd never have got anywhere.
“Beneath the makeup and behind the smile I am just a girl who wishes for the world.”
“The Universe is made of stories, not of atoms.”
"The Speed of Darkness"; this line is sometimes misquoted as "The Universe is made of stories not atoms."
The Speed of Darkness (1968)
Variant: The universe is made up of stories, not atoms.
Variant: What I write is different from what I say, what I say is different from what I think, what I think is different from what I ought to think and so it goes further into the deepest darkness.
Source: Pride and Prejudice
“And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”
"The End"; The last full song track of Abbey Road (1969) the last Beatles album to be recorded before the band broke up. (Let It Be was the last album released, but had been recorded earlier.)
Lyrics, The Beatles
Source: The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics
As quoted in The Ring of Truth (2004) by Joseph O'Day
“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”
Variant: What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness.
Source: The Kreutzer Sonata
Variant: But I hate to hear you talking so like a fine gentleman, and as if women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures. We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days.
Source: Persuasion
Variant: If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever.
“We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once.”
“Don't allow your mind to tell your heart what to do. The mind gives up easily”
“All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.”
Variant: They're a rotten lot," I shouted, across the lawn. "You're worth the whole damn bunch put together.
Source: The Great Gatsby
“The most pathetic person in the world is some one who has sight but no vision.”
“Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.”
Source: War and Peace
“If you're going to tell people the truth, you better make them laugh; otherwise they'll kill you.”
Credited to Shaw in the lead in to the mockumentary C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America (2004) and other recent works, but this or slight variants of it are also sometimes attributed to W. C. Fields, Charlie Chaplin, and Oscar Wilde. It might possibly be derived from Shaw's statement in John Bull's Other Island (1907): "My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world."
Another possibility is that it is derived from Shaw's characteristic of Mark Twain: "He has to put things in such a way as to make people who would otherwise hang him believe he is joking."
Variants:
If you are going to tell people the truth, you'd better make them laugh. Otherwise, they'll kill you.
If you're going to tell people the truth, you'd better make them laugh. Otherwise, they'll kill you.
Disputed
“Salt is born of the purest parents: the sun and the sea.”
Source: Death in the Afternoon (1932), Ch. 1
“You're never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true.”
Variant: You are never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.
Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”
Not found in Burke's writings. Appears to be a paraphrase of "It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little." sourced to Sydney Smith (1771 - 1845).
“The time is always right to do what’s right.”
Speech delivered in Finney Chapel at Oberlin College (22 October 1964), as reported in "When MLK came to Oberlin" by Cindy Leise, The Chronicle-Telegram (21 January 2008) http://chronicle.northcoastnow.com/2008/01/21/when-mlk-came-to-oberlin/
1960s
Variant: The time is always right to do what’s right.
“A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.”
“What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?”
1930s, Wisehart interview (1930)
Context: Much reading after a certain age diverts the mind from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking, just as the man who spends too much time in the theaters is apt to be content with living vicariously instead of living his own life.
Letter to Adrianna Enriques (October 1921), p. 83
Attributed in posthumous publications, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979)
“A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.”
Variant: A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
“There is no friend as loyal as a book.”
Source: Entweder / Oder
“Men are from Earth, women are from Earth. Deal with it.”
“At every moment of our lives, we all have one foot in a fairy tale and the other in the abyss.”
“A single metaphor can give birth to love.”
pg 10
Variant: Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love.
Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part One: Lightness and Weight
“Technology is the campfire around which we tell our stories.”
“If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and adore.”
Source: 1830s, Nature http://www.emersoncentral.com/nature.htm (1836), Ch. 1, Nature
Context: If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown!
Context: If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.
Source: The Complete Fairy Tales
