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Popular Quotables
- “Wealth and Poverty,” speech, National… (6,638)
- “The Lesson for Today,” A Witness Tree (1942) (5,802)
- Agamemnon, ll. 175-183 [tr. Johnston (2007)] (5,687)
- Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962) (4,869)
- “The Triumph of Stupidity” (10 May 1933) (4,811)
- “On The Conduct of Life” (1822) (3,908)
- “In Search of a Majority,” Speech,… (3,809)
- “Get a Knife, Get a Dog, but Get Rid of… (3,663)
- “The Historian as Participant,” Daedalus… (3,057)
- “Hallowed Ground” (1825) (3,056)
Most Quoted Authors
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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
- 6-Jul-20 - (Attributed) | WIST on Quoted in Plutarch, Parallel Lives, “The Life of Solon,” sec. 18.5 [tr. Perrin (1914)].
- 6-Jul-20 - Agamemnon, l. 928 | WIST on Oedipus Rex, l. 1529 (concluding words).
- 20-May-20 - Introduction to the Art of Thinking, ch. 1, "Friendship" (1761) | WIST on John 15:13 (KJV).
- 18-May-20 - Chamblee54 on Clouds, ll. 998-999 (423 BC) [tr. Athenian Soc. (1912)].
- 18-May-20 - Chamblee54 on Mills E. Godwin, Governor of Virginia (Dec 1966).
- 11-May-20 - Chamblee54 on “Indian Summer,” Enough Rope (1926).
Quotations about consequence
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
Policies are judged by their consequences but crusades are judged by how good they make the crusaders feel.
Thomas Sowell (b. 1930) American economist and political commentator
Compassion vs. Guilt, and Other Essays (1987)
(Source)
Better ask twice than lose your way once.
Other Authors and Sources
Danish Proverb
Our acts make or mar us, we are the children of our own deeds.
Victor Hugo (1802-1885) French writer
(Attributed)
Quoted in Henry Southgate, Things a Lady Would Like To Know, 2nd ed. (1875). But not confirmed or found in Hugo's writings.
Our deeds still travel with us from afar.
And what we have been makes us what we are.
George Eliot (1819-1880) English novelist [pseud. of Mary Ann Evans]
Middlemarch (1871-72)
A great flame follows a little spark.
[Poca favilla gran fiamma seconda.]
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) Italian poet
The Divine Comedy, “Paradiso,” Canto 1, l. 34 (1321)
No action, whether foul or fair,
Is ever done, but it leaves somewhere
A record, written by fingers ghostly,
As a blessing or a curse, and mostly
In the greater weakness or greater strength
Of the acts which follow it.Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
Christus, pt. 2 “A Village Church” (1872)
Idleness is sweet, and its consequences are cruel.
[La molesse est douce, et sa suite est cruelle.]
John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) US President (1825-29)
(Attributed)
Said to have been written in his diary, but unverified.
Happiness is not a reward — it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment — it is a result.
Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899) American lawyer, agnostic, orator
“The Christian Religion,” Part 2, The North American Review (Nov 1881)
(Source)
