- WIST is my personal collection of quotations, curated for thought, amusement, turn of phrase, historical significance, or sometimes just (often-unintentional) irony.
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Popular Quotables
- “Wealth and Poverty,” speech, National… (8,189)
- Agamemnon, ll. 175-183 [tr. Johnston (2007)] (6,170)
- “The Lesson for Today,” A Witness Tree (1942) (6,010)
- “The Triumph of Stupidity” (10 May 1933) (5,211)
- Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962) (4,916)
- “On The Conduct of Life” (1822) (4,475)
- “In Search of a Majority,” Speech,… (3,971)
- “Tips for Teens,” Social Studies (1981) (3,938)
- “Get a Knife, Get a Dog, but Get Rid of… (3,775)
- Letter to Clara Rilke (1 Jan 1907) (3,658)
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Adams, John • Bacon, Francis • Bible • Bierce, Ambrose • Billings, Josh • Butcher, Jim • Chesterfield (Lord) • Chesterton, Gilbert Keith • Churchill, Winston • Cicero, Marcus Tullius • Einstein, Albert • Eisenhower, Dwight David • Emerson, Ralph Waldo • Franklin, Benjamin • Fuller, Thomas (1654) • Gaiman, Neil • Galbraith, John Kenneth • Gandhi, Mohandas • Hazlitt, William • Heinlein, Robert A. • Hoffer, Eric • Huxley, Aldous • Ingersoll, Robert Green • Jefferson, Thomas • Johnson, Lyndon • Johnson, Samuel • Kennedy, John F. • King, Martin Luther • La Rochefoucauld, Francois • Lewis, C.S. • Lincoln, Abraham • Mencken, H.L. • Orwell, George • Pratchett, Terry • Roosevelt, Eleanor • Roosevelt, Theodore • Russell, Bertrand • Seneca the Younger • Shakespeare, William • Shaw, George Bernard • Sophocles • Stevenson, Adlai • Stevenson, Robert Louis • Twain, Mark • Wilde, Oscar- Only the 45 most quoted authors are shown above. Full author list.
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- France, Anatole - (Spurious) | WIST on A Writer’s Notebook (1949)
- Dave on The Odyssey [Ὀδύσσεια], Book 6, l. 180ff [Odysseus to Nausicaa] (c. 700 BC) [tr. Rieu (1946)]
- Richard McBroom on “What I Believe,” Forum and Century (Oct 1930)
- Marcus Aurelius - (Spurious) | WIST on Meditations, Book 2, #11 [tr. Gill (2014)]
- Richard McBroom on “What I Believe,” Forum and Century (Oct 1930)
- Elizabeth II - Address to the Nation (5 Apr 2020) | WIST on “We’ll Meet Again” (1939) [with Hughie Charles]
- Pratchett, Terry - The Last Hero (2001) | WIST on Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs, #3366 (1732)
- King, Stephen - On Writing, ch. 12 (2000) | WIST on In “Ten Rules for Writing Fiction,” The Guardian (20 Feb 2010)
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Quotations by Barrie, James
You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by. Yes, but some of them are golden only because we let them slip.
Added on 31-Jan-08 | Last updated 31-Jan-08
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“Why can’t you fly now, mother?”
“Because I am grown up, dearest. When people grow up they forget the way.”
“Why do they forget the way?”
“Because they are no longer gay and innocent and heartless. It is only the gay and innocent and heartless who can fly.”
Added on 6-Sep-10 | Last updated 6-Sep-10
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A safe but sometimes chilly way of recalling the past is to force open a crammed drawer. If you are searching for anything in particular you don’t find it, but something falls out at the back that is often more interesting.
Added on 4-Feb-08 | Last updated 4-Feb-08
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Every time a child says, “I don’t believe in fairies,” there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead.
Added on 23-Jan-15 | Last updated 23-Jan-15
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Topics: belief, believe, faerie, fairy, faith
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To die will be an awfully big adventure.
James Barrie (1860-1937) Scottish novelist and dramatist
Peter Pan, Act III, final sentence (1905)
The following passage was in the 1911 book (ch. 8 "The Mermaid's Lagoon"); the scene was added to the 1905 edition of the play:
Peter was alone on the lagoon.
The rock was very small now; soon it would be submerged. Pale rays of light tiptoed across the waters; and by and by there was to be heard a sound at once the most musical and the most melancholy in the world: the mermaids calling to the moon.
Peter was not quite like other boys; but he was afraid at last. A tremor ran through him, like a shudder passing over the sea; but on the sea one shudder follows another till there are hundreds of them, and Peter felt just the one. Next moment he was standing erect on the rock again, with that smile on his face and a drum beating within him. It was saying, "To die will be an awfully big adventure."Sometimes quoted as "To die would be an awfully great adventure," "To die will be a great adventure," and "To die would be a great adventure."
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 20-Aug-10
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The best of our fiction is by novelists who allow that it is as good as they can give, and the worst by novelists who maintain that they could do much better if only the public would let them.
Added on 1-Sep-10 | Last updated 1-Sep-10
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Life is a long lesson in humility.
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 1-Feb-04
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If it’s heaven for climate, it’s hell for company.
James Barrie (1860-1937) Scottish novelist and dramatist
The Little Minister, ch. 3 (1891)
A similar quote is cited to Mark Twain at about the same time. More research into this quotation can be found here.
Added on 1-Dec-10 | Last updated 19-Jul-11
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The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story and writes another, and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 1-Feb-04
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Wise children always choose a mother who was a shocking flirt in her maiden days, and so had several offers before she accepted their fortunate papa.
Added on 26-Aug-10 | Last updated 26-Aug-10
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Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary?
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 20-Aug-10
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One’s religion is whatever he is most interested in.
Added on 19-Feb-08 | Last updated 19-Feb-08
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KATE: One’s religion is whatever he is most interested in, and yours is — Success.
HARRY: Ambition — it is the last infirmity of noble minds.
Added on 24-May-17 | Last updated 24-May-17
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Topics: ambition, cause, focus, religion, self-interest, success
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ALICK. What IS charm, exactly, Maggie?
MAGGIE. Oh, it’s — it’s a sort of bloom on a woman. If you have it, you don’t need to have anything else; and if you don’t have it, it doesn’t much matter what else you have.
Added on 18-Jul-16 | Last updated 18-Jul-16
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Topics: attractiveness, charisma, charm, woman
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Every man who is high up loves to think that he has done it all himself; and the wife smiles, and lets it go at that.
Added on 30-Apr-15 | Last updated 30-Apr-15
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Topics: accomplishment, achievement, credit, husband, solo, team, teamwork, wife
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Never ascribe to an opponent motives meaner than your own.
Added on 15-Nov-11 | Last updated 15-Nov-11
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It’s not real work unless you would rather be doing something else.
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 20-Aug-10
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God gave us our memories so that we might have roses in December.
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 1-Feb-04
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