Source: The Greatest My Own Story
Mrs Dalloway (1925)
Source: Mrs. Dalloway
Context: What she loved was this, here, now, in front of her; the fat lady in the cab. Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? but that somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here there, she survived. Peter survived, lived in each other, she being part, she was positive, of the trees at home; of the house there, ugly, rambling all to bits and pieces as it was; part of people she had never met; being laid out like a mist between the people she knew best, who lifted her on their branches as she had seen the trees lift the mist, but it spread ever so far, her life, herself.
1960s, Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1964)
Context: I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.
Context: I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.
“You must always believe that life is as extraordinary as music says it is.”
Source: The Fountain Overflows
Source: Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life
Source: The Last Wish
Source: The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom
“And as for the rest, let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.”
Variant: Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.
Source: Letters to a Young Poet
Source: The Secret Garden
Source: Witches Abroad
“There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do.”
The Journey's Echo (1963), p. 161 https://books.google.com/books?id=xlFbAAAAMAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22There+can+be+no+happiness+if+the+things+we+believe+in+are+different+from+the+things+we+do.%22.
Sec. 283; Variant translation: For believe me: the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and greatest enjoyment is — to live dangerously.
The Gay Science (1882)
Context: For believe me! — the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors, you seekers of knowledge! Soon the age will be past when you could be content to live hidden in forests like shy deer! At long last the search for knowledge will reach out for its due: — it will want to rule and possess, and you with it!
“I believed that I wanted to be a poet, but deep down I just wanted to be a poem.”
Source: The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century
Third Olynthiac http://books.google.com/books?id=n4INAAAAYAAJ&q="the+easiest+thing+in+the+world+is+self-deceit+for+every+man+believes+what+he+wishes+though+the+reality+is+often+different"&pg=PA57#v=onepage, section 19 (349 BC), as translated by Charles Rann Kennedy (1852)
Variants:
A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true.
As quoted in The Routledge Dictionary of Quotations (1987) by Robert Andrews, p. 255
There is nothing easier than self-delusion. Since what man desires, is the first thing he believes.
Source: The Origins of Totalitarianism
Anecdote recorded as something that Lincoln said in a conversation with educator Newman Bateman in the Autumn of 1860, in Life of Abraham Lincoln (1866) by Josiah Gilbert Holland, Chapter XVI, p. 287<!-- University of Nebraska Press -->
Posthumous attributions
Context: I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and slavery. I see the storm coming, and I know that His hand is in it. If He has a place and work for me — and I think He has — I believe I am ready. I am nothing, but truth is everything. I know I am right because I know that liberty is right, for Christ teaches it, and Christ is God.
Context: I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and slavery. I see the storm coming, and I know that His hand is in it. If He has a place and work for me — and I think He has — I believe I am ready. I am nothing, but truth is everything. I know I am right because I know that liberty is right, for Christ teaches it, and Christ is God. I have told them that a house divided against itself cannot stand, and Christ and reason say the same; and they will find it so. Douglas doesn't care whether slavery is voted up or voted down, but God cares, and humanity cares, and I care; and with God’s help I shall not fail. I may not see the end; but it will come and I shall be vindicated; and these men will find that they have not read their Bibles aright.
“I believe in teaching people to be individuals, and to understand other individuals.”
Source: A Passage to India
“To believe yourself brave is to be brave; it is the one only essential thing.”
Source: Joan of Arc
Source: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There
“My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me.”
Source: The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge
Source: Manifestoes of Surrealism
“The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect everything; the young know everything.”
Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young (1894)
“I believe most people are essentially good. I know that I am. It's you I'm not entirely sure of.”
Source: Full Dark, No Stars
Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow
Source: Orlando: A Biography (1928), Ch. 3
Context: No passion is stronger in the breast of man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high. Whigs and Tories, Liberal party and Labour party — for what do they battle except their own prestige?
Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
“… disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business….”
Source: Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
“A drinking man's someone who wants to forget he isn't still young and believing”
Source: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
“Never explain — your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyhow.”
The Motto Book (1907).
Variant: Never explain — your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyhow.
Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
“Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe it can achieve.”
p.32 -->
Variant: Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.
Source: Think and Grow Rich: A Black Choice
“A cat is more intelligent than people believe, and can be taught any crime.”
“If you believe that life is worth living then your belief will create the fact.”
“Never make excuses. Your friends don't need them and your foes won't believe them.”
Source: Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court
“She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist.”
The Words (1964), speaking of his grandmother.
Speech of the Sub-Treasury (1839), Collected Works 1:178 http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=lincoln;cc=lincoln;view=text;idno=lincoln1;rgn=div1;node=lincoln1:193
Variant (misspelling): The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just; and it shall not deter me.
1830s
Context: Broken by it, I, too, may be; bow to it I never will. The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just; it shall not deter me.
“It's a lack of faith that makes people afraid of meeting challenges, and I believe in myself.”
As quoted in 101 Best Ways to Get Ahead (2004) edited by Michael E. Angier, with Sarah Pond, p. 59
Source: I Feel Bad about My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman
“What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.”
“The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.”
As quoted in My Favorite Quotations (1990) by Norman Vincent Peale
Source: The Soul of a Butterfly: Reflections on Life's Journey
“I believe that sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, wholesome things that money can buy.”
“I believe that anyone can conquer fear by doing the things he fears to do…”
“I always prefer to believe the best of everybody; it saves so much trouble”
“I support gay marriage. I believe they have a right to be as miserable as the rest of us.”
“The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.”
On the advisableness of improving natural knowledge (1866) http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext01/thx1410.txt
1860s
Source: Collected Essays of Thomas Henry Huxley
Context: The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin. And it cannot be otherwise, for every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority, the cherishing of the keenest scepticism, the annihilation of the spirit of blind faith; and the most ardent votary of science holds his firmest convictions, not because the men he most venerates hold them; not because their verity is testified by portents and wonders; but because his experience teaches him that whenever he chooses to bring these convictions into contact with their primary source, Nature — whenever he thinks fit to test them by appealing to experiment and to observation — Nature will confirm them. The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.
“If you'll believe in me, I'll believe in you. Is that a bargain?”
“To be a great champion you must believe you are the best. If you’re not, pretend you are.”
“I can't believe it. I can't believe it. Football. Bloody hell.”
“You have to believe it and you hate it. I don't have to and I think it's beautiful.”
Source: Bridge to Terabithia
Misattributed to Lincoln by several authors since about 2000. Source of quote: General Douglas MacArthur is quoted as saying, "Like Abraham Lincoln, I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts" (John Gunther, The Riddle of MacArthur, New York: Harper, 1950, p. 61). By the 1970s, the phrase is quoted in several places without the words "Like Abraham Lincoln," and attributed directly to Lincoln. The additional phrase "and beer" first appears in a list of jokes published online in 1999.
Misattributed
