- 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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Popular Quotables
- “Wealth and Poverty,” speech, National… (6,884)
- “The Lesson for Today,” A Witness Tree (1942) (5,812)
- Agamemnon, ll. 175-183 [tr. Johnston (2007)] (5,729)
- Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962) (4,870)
- “The Triumph of Stupidity” (10 May 1933) (4,838)
- “On The Conduct of Life” (1822) (3,923)
- “In Search of a Majority,” Speech,… (3,814)
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- “Hallowed Ground” (1825) (3,062)
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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
- 24-Jul-20 - Italian proverb | WIST on Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales [Maxims], # 89 (1665-1678).
- 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).
Quotations about consolation
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
“Come on, now. Home we go and a nice cuppa,” said Mr. Butler, who was convinced that tea was the cure for most female ills, from miscarriage to bankruptcy.
Kerry Greenwood (b. 1954) Australian author and lawyer
The Green Mill Murder (1993)
“Even if some details of dogma aren’t true — or even all of ’em — think what a consolation religion and the church are to weak humanity!”
“Are they? I wonder! Don’t cheerful agnostics, who know they are going to die dead, worry much less than good Baptists, who worry lest their sons and cousins and sweethearts fail to get into the Baptist heaven — or what is even worse, who wonder if they may not have guessed wrong — if God may not be a Catholic, maybe, or a Mormon or Seventh-day Adventist instead of a Baptist, and then they’ll go to hell themselves. Consolation? No!”Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) American novelist, playwright
Elmer Gantry (1927)
Talk to me about the truth of religion and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I’ll listen submissively. But don’t come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don’t understand.
Unless, of course, you can literally believe all that stuff about family reunions “on the further shore,” pictured in entirely earthly terms. But that is all unscriptural, all out of bad hymns and lithographs. There’s not a word of it in the Bible. And it rings false. We know it couldn’t be like that. Reality never repeats. The exact same thing is never taken away and given back. How well the Spiritualists bait their hook! “Things on this side are not so different after all.” There are cigars in Heaven. For that is what we should all like. The happy past restored.
And that, just that, is what I cry out for, with mad, midnight endearments and entreaties spoken into the empty air.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
A Grief Observed (1961)
We always say, one day we will laugh at this. I always try to make sure that this one day is today.
Jacob Aagaard (b. 1973) Danish-Scottish chess grandmaster, author
“Are chess players intelligent?” Quality Chess Blog (6 Oct 2010)
(Source)
Fellowship in woe doth woe assuage.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
“The Rape of Lucrece,” l. 790 (1594)
Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) English philosopher, scientist, author, statesman
(Attributed)
