- 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.
- 17,789 quotes and counting ...
Quote Search
Authors
Topic Cloud
action age America author 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 religion science society success truth virtue war wealth wisdom writing- I've been adding topics/tags since 2014, so not all quotes have been given one. Full topic list.
WISTish
- * Visual quotes (graphics, memes) only
Admin
Popular Quotables
- “Wealth and Poverty,” speech, National… (7,642)
- Agamemnon, ll. 175-183 [tr. Johnston (2007)] (5,950)
- “The Lesson for Today,” A Witness Tree (1942) (5,901)
- “The Triumph of Stupidity” (10 May 1933) (5,046)
- Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962) (4,879)
- “On The Conduct of Life” (1822) (4,108)
- “In Search of a Majority,” Speech,… (3,914)
- “Get a Knife, Get a Dog, but Get Rid of… (3,740)
- “A Cult of Ignorance,” Newsweek (21 Jan 1980) (3,312)
- “The Historian as Participant,” Daedalus… (3,291)
Most Quoted Authors
Author Cloud
Adams, John • Bacon, Francis • Bible • Bierce, Ambrose • Billings, Josh • Butcher, Jim • Chesterton, Gilbert Keith • Churchill, Winston • Einstein, Albert • Eisenhower, Dwight David • Emerson, Ralph Waldo • Franklin, Benjamin • Fuller, Thomas (1654) • Gaiman, Neil • Galbraith, John Kenneth • Gandhi, Mohandas • Goethe, Johann von • Hazlitt, William • Heinlein, Robert A. • Hoffer, Eric • Huxley, Aldous • Ingersoll, Robert Green • James, William • 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 • Stevenson, Adlai • Stevenson, Robert Louis • Twain, Mark • Watterson, Bill • Wilde, Oscar- Only the 45 most quoted authors are shown above. Full author list.
Recent Feedback
- 9-Nov-20 - "On Education," Address on installation as rector, University of St Andrews, Scotland (1 Feb 1867) | WIST on Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967).
- 4-Nov-20 - ***Dave Does the Blog on Democracy in America, 1.14 (1835) [tr. Reeve and Bowen (1862)].
- 4-Nov-20 - ***Dave Does the Blog on When You Ride Alone You Ride With Bin Laden (2002).
- 4-Nov-20 - ***Dave Does the Blog on Annual Message to Congress (6 Jan 1941).
- 4-Nov-20 - ***Dave Does the Blog on (Attributed) (1862).
- 4-Nov-20 - ***Dave Does the Blog on Kansas City Star (7 May 1918).
-
Quotations about activity
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
There’s some devil in us that drives us to and fro on everlasting idiocies. There’s time for everything except the things worth doing. Think of something you really care about. Then add hour to hour and calculate the fraction of your life that you’ve actually spent in doing it. And then calculate the time you’ve spent on things like shaving, riding to and fro on buses, waiting in railway, junctions, swapping dirty stories, and reading the newspapers.
George Orwell (1903-1950) English writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
Coming up for Air, ch. 5 (1939)
(Source)
Solitude is not lack.
Laurie Helgoe (b. 1960) American psychologist and author
Introvert Power, ch. 2 (2008)
(Source)
Sometimes misquoted "Solitude is not a lack."
Life is not made up of dramatic incidents — even the life of a nation. It is made up of slowly evolving events and processes, which newspapers, by a score of different forms of emphasis, can reasonably attempt to explore from day to day. But television news jerks from incident to incident. For the real world of patient and familiar arrangements, it substitutes an unreal world of constant activity, and the effect is already apparent in the way which the world behaves. It is almost impossible, these days, to consider any problem or any event except as a crisis; and, by this very way of looking at it, it in fact becomes a crisis.
Henry Fairlie (1924-1990) British journalist and social critic
“Can You Believe Your Eyes?” Horizon (Spring 1967)
The busy have no time for tears.
George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) English poet
The Two Foscari, Act 4, sc. 1 (1821)
Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy. Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830) English writer
Table Talk, “On the Pleasure of Painting” (1821-22)
The firefly only shines when on the wing.
So is it with the mind — when once we rest
We darken.Philip James Bailey (1816-1902) English poet
Festus (1839)
The difference between the Japanese and the American is summed up in their opposite reactions to the proverb (popular in both nations), “A rolling stone gathers no moss.” Epidemiologist S. Leonard Syme observes that to the Japanese, moss is exquisite and valued; a stone is enhanced by moss; hence a person who keeps moving and changing never acquires the beauty and benefits of stability. To Americans, the proverb is an admonition to keep rolling, to keep from being covered with clinging attachments.
Other Authors and Sources
Carol Tavris, Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion, ch. 4 (1982)
Some find activity only in repose, and others repose only in movement.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [ed. Auster (1983)]
Up, Sluggard, and waste not life;
in the grave will be sleeping enough.Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher
Poor Richard’s Alamanack (Sep 1741)
Repeated as "There will be enough sleeping in the Grave" in "The Way of Wealth" (7 Jul 1756).
Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else — if you ran a very long time as we’ve been doing.”
“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else you must run at least twice as fast as that!”Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) English writer and mathematician [pseud. of Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson]
Through the Looking-Glass, ch. 2 (1871)
Happiness is someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.
Other Authors and Sources
Chinese proverb
Also attributed to T. Bodett, S. Freud, A. Chalmers.
To condemn spontaneous and delightful occupations because they are useless for self-preservation shows an uncritical prizing of life regardless of its contents.
George Santayana (1863-1952) Spanish-American poet and philosopher [Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruíz de Santayana y Borrás]
The Sense of Beauty, Part 1 “The Nature of Beauty,” sec. 4 “Work and Play” (1896)
(Source)
Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance.
Dave Barry (b. 1947) American humorist
“25 Things I Have Learned In 50 Years,” #25 (1997)
It is better to wear out than to rust out.
Richard Cumberland (1632-1718) English philosopher and cleric (Bishop of Peterborough)
(Attributed)
(Source)
Quoted in G. Horne, "Sermon on the Duty of Contending for the Truth" (1786).
