- 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.
- 16,790 quotes and counting ...
Quote Search
Authors
Topic Cloud
action age America belief books change character Christianity death democracy education ego evil faith fear freedom future God government happiness history honesty humanity integrity justice leadership liberty life love morality perspective politics poverty power religion science society success truth tyranny 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… (5,768)
- “The Lesson for Today,” A Witness Tree (1942) (5,669)
- Agamemnon, ll. 175-183 [tr. Johnston (2007)] (5,450)
- Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962) (4,826)
- “The Triumph of Stupidity” (10 May 1933) (4,495)
- “In Search of a Majority,” Speech,… (3,718)
- “On The Conduct of Life” (1822) (3,610)
- “Get a Knife, Get a Dog, but Get Rid of… (3,553)
- “The Historian as Participant,” Daedalus… (2,986)
- “Hallowed Ground” (1825) (2,985)
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
- 17-Jan-20 - (Attributed) | WIST on The Screw-Tape Letters, #29 (1942).
- 7-Jan-20 - "Your Future As A Writer," Writer's Digest (May 1986) | WIST on The Outline of History, Vol. 2, ch. 41, sec. 4 (1921).
- 23-Dec-19 - Chamblee54 on Last written note.
- 16-Dec-19 - Dave on Authors.
- 20-Nov-19 - Debbie on Authors.
- 14-Oct-19 - Address to the Massachusetts legislature (9 Jan 1961) | WIST on Luke 12:48 (NIV).
Quotations about anxiety
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
But reassurance can be the cruellest antidote to anxiety. Our rosy predictions both leave the anxious unprepared for the worst, and unwittingly imply that it would be disastrous if the worst came to pass. Seneca more wisely asks us to consider that bad things probably will occur, but adds that they are unlikely ever to be as bad as we fear.
Alain de Botton (b. 1969) Swiss-British author
The Consolations of Philosophy, ch. 3 “Consolation for Frustration” (2000)
(Source)
Anxiety is the unwillingness to play even when you know the odds are for you. Courage is the willingness to play even when you know the odds are against you.
Thomas Szasz (b. 1920) Hungarian-American psychiatrist, educator
The Second Sin (1973)
Anxiety is love’s greatest killer. It creates the failures. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic.
Anaïs Nin (1903-1977) Catalan-Cuban-French author, diarist
The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 4, 1944–47, Feb. 1947 (1971)
(Source)
Love looks forward, hate looks back, anxiety has eyes all over its head.
Mignon McLaughlin (1913-1983) American journalist and author
The Neurotic’s Notebook (1963)
I define anxiety as experiencing failure in advance.
Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.
Worrying is carrying tomorrow’s load with today’s strength — carrying two days at once. It is moving into tomorrow ahead of time. Worrying does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength.
There is no such thing as inner peace. There is only nervousness or death.
Suspicion begets suspicion.
Publilius Syrus (d. 42 BC) Assyrian slave, writer, philosopher [less correctly Publius Syrus]
Sententiae [Moral Sayings], # 928 [tr. Lyman (1862)]
But the greatest gift in the power of loneliness to bestow is the realization that life does not consist either of wallowing in the past or of peering anxiously at the future; and it is appalling to contemplate the great number of often painful steps by which one arrives at a truth so old, so obvious, and so frequently expressed. It is good for one to appreciate that life is now. Whether it offers little or much, life is now — this day — this hour — and is probably the only experience of the kind one is to have.
Charles Macomb Flandrau (1871-1938) American author and essayist
Viva Mexico!, ch. 7 (1908)
When thinking about life, remember this: no amount of guilt can change the past, and no amount of anxiety can change the future.
Other Authors and Sources
Anonymous
Why worry? If you’ve done the very best you can, worrying won’t make it any better.
Walt Disney (1901-1966) American entrepreneur, animator, film producer, showman
In “The Amazing Secret of Walt Disney,” Interview by Don Eddy, The American Magazine (Aug 1955)
(Source)
The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.
Buddha (c.563-483 BC) Indian mystic, philosopher [b. Siddharta Gautama]
In Bukkyõ Dendõ Kyõkai, The Teaching of Buddha (1966)
Likely a paraphrase of a variety of the Buddha's teachings.
It is said that our anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strength.
Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892) British Baptist preacher, author [Charles Haddon (C.H.) Spurgeon]
The Salt-Cellars (1889)
(Source)
Most people today don’t want honest answers insofar as honest means unpleasant or disturbing. They want a soft answer that turneth away anxiety. They want answers that are, in effect, escapes.
Louis Kronenberger (1904-1980) American critic, novelist, biographer
“Unbrave New World,” The Cart and the Horse (1964)
An allusion to Proverbs 15:1 "A soft answer turneth away wrath."
