- WIST is my personal collection of quotations, curated for thought, amusement, turn of phrase, historical significance, or sometimes just (often-unintentional) irony.
Please feel free to browse and borrow.
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- 18,310 quotes and counting ...
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action age America beauty belief change character death democracy education ego error evil faith fear freedom future God government happiness history humanity integrity justice leadership liberty life love morality perspective politics power pride progress reality religion science society success truth virtue war wealth wisdom writing- I've been adding topics since 2014, so not all quotes have been given one. Full topic list.
Author Cloud
Aristotle • 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.
Most Quoted Authors
Popular Quotables
- “Wealth and Poverty,” speech, National… (8,272)
- Agamemnon, ll. 175-183 [tr. Johnston (2007)] (6,196)
- “The Lesson for Today,” A Witness Tree (1942) (6,025)
- “The Triumph of Stupidity” (10 May 1933) (5,242)
- Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962) (4,922)
- “On The Conduct of Life” (1822) (4,497)
- “Tips for Teens,” Social Studies (1981) (4,078)
- “In Search of a Majority,” Speech,… (3,983)
- “Get a Knife, Get a Dog, but Get Rid of… (3,776)
- Letter to Clara Rilke (1 Jan 1907) (3,669)
Recent Feedback
- Snyder, Timothy - On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (2017) | WIST on “Notes on Nationalism” (1945)
- Dave on Notice to email subscribers
- Nina on Notice to email subscribers
- ~~Admin - Notice to email subscribers | WIST on Subscribe/Feeds
- 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]
WISTish
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We take no delight in existence except when we are struggling for something.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) German philosopher
“Studies in Pessimism: The Vanity of Existence,” Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer [tr. Saunders (1851)]
