- 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… (5,778)
- “The Lesson for Today,” A Witness Tree (1942) (5,672)
- Agamemnon, ll. 175-183 [tr. Johnston (2007)] (5,451)
- Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962) (4,826)
- “The Triumph of Stupidity” (10 May 1933) (4,503)
- “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… (3,554)
- “The Historian as Participant,” Daedalus… (2,987)
- “Hallowed Ground” (1825) (2,985)
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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.
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- 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 expression
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
I really love language; it allows us to explain the pain and the glory, the nuances and the delicacies, of our existence. Most of all, it allows us to laugh. We need language.
Maya Angelou (1928-2014) American poet, memoirist, activist [b. Marguerite Ann Johnson]
“The Art of Fiction,” Paris Review, #116, Interview with George Plimpton (1990)
A man who cannot get angry is like a stream that cannot overflow, that is always turbid. Sometimes indignation is as good as a thunder-storm in summer, clearing and cooling the air.
Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) American clergyman and orator
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit, “Man” (1887)
(Source)
Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.
William Arthur Ward (1921-1994) American aphorist, author, educator
(Attributed)
Don’t express your ideas too clearly. Most people think little of what they understand, and venerate what they do not.
Baltasar Gracián y Morales (1601-1658) Spanish writer.
The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)
The more an idea is developed, the more concise becomes its expression; the more a tree is pruned, the better is the fruit.
Alfred Bougeard (1815-1882) French writer
(Attributed)
In J. De Finod (ed., tr.) A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness (1881).
Art is not living. It is a use of living.
Audre Lorde (1934-1992) American writer, feminist, civil rights activist
“My Words Will Be There”
(Source)
Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) American poet
(Attributed)
I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.
Audre Lorde (1934-1992) American writer, feminist, civil rights activist
“The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action,” speech, Modern Language Association (28 Dec 1977)
(Source)
After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) English novelist, essayist and critic
“The Rest is Silence,” Music at Night and Other Essays (1931)
(Source)
