Quotations about:
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Marriage is not just spiritual communion and passionate embraces; marriage is also three-meals-a-day and remembering to carry out the trash.

Joyce Brothers (1927-2013) American psychologist, television personality, advice columnist

“When Your Husband’s Affection Cools,” Good Housekeeping (May 1972)

Remember, gentlemen, an order that can be misunderstood will be misunderstood.

Helmuth von Moltke (1800-1891) Prussian soldier

Comment as Chief of the Prussian General Staff, Battle of Sedan (Sep 1870)

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)

There is something about a Martini,
A tingle remarkably pleasant;
A yellow, a mellow Martini;
I wish I had one at present.
There is something about a Martini,
Ere the dining and dancing begin,
And to tell you the truth,
It is not the vermouth —
I think that perhaps it’s the gin.

Ogden Nash (1902-1971) American poet

“A Drink with Something In It,” The Primrose Path (1935)
    (Source)

Consistently wise decisions can only be made by those whose wisdom is constantly challenged.

Theodore "Ted" Sorensen (1928-2010) American lawyer, writer, presidential adviser, speechwriter

Decision-Making in the White House: The Olive Branch or the Arrows, ch. 7 (1963)

ENOBARBUS: Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety; other women cloy
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet

Antony and Cleopatra, Act 2, sc. 2, l. 276ff (2.2.276-279) (1607)
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If you want to make peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.

Moshe Dayan (1915-1981) Israeli military leader and politician

In Newsweek (17 Oct 1977)

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) American poet

“Hope is the thing with feathers”
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Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) Welsh poet and writer

“Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” (1947)
    (Source)

First published in Botteghe Oscure (Nov 1951).

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) American poet

“The Summer Day,” New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1 (1992)

No man is defeated without until he has first been defeated within.

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) First Lady of the US (1933-45), politician, diplomat, activist

You Learn by Living, ch. 10 (1960)
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Normal is the average of deviance.

Rita Mae Brown (b. 1944) American author, playwright

Venus Envy, ch. 21 (1993)
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Of course I lie to people. But I lie altruistically — for our mutual good. The lie is the basic building block of good manners. That may seem mildly shocking to a moralist — but then what isn’t?

Quentin Crisp (1908-1999) English writer and raconteur [b. Denis Pratt]

Manners from Heaven: A Divine Guide to Good Behavior (1984)
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Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody’s business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy.

Thomas Merton (1915-1968) French-American religious and writer [a.k.a. Fr. M. Louis]

Disputed Questions, “The Power and Meaning of Love” (1953)
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Life is thick sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.

[La vie est hérissée d’épines, & je ne sçais d’autre remède, que de passer vite à travers ces broussailles. C’est donner de la consistance aux maux, que de trop s’y arrêter.]

Voltaire (1694-1778) French writer [pseud. of Francois-Marie Arouet]

(Attributed)
    (Source)

(Source (French)). Quoted in Louis Mayeul Chaudon, ed., Historical and Critical Memoirs of the Life and Writings of M. de Voltaire [Mémoires Pour Servir à L’Histoire de M. de Voltaire], Part 2, "Anecdotes Sur Voltaire (1785, tr. 1786). The English translation is also quoted in The Lady's Magazine, "Anecdotes of Voltaire" (Jul 1786). Voltaire used a similar metaphor in a 1769 letter ("La vie est hérissée de ces épines").

More discussion: Life Is Thick Sown with Thorns, and I Know No Other Remedy Than To Pass Quickly Through Them – Quote Investigator.

No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one’s sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one’s character may remain entirely unaffected for the better. With mere good intentions, hell is proverbially paved.

William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher

The Principles of Psychology, Vol. 1, ch. 4 “Habit” (1890)
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This chapter originally published in Popular Science Monthly (Feb 1887).

We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer

All Things Considered, “Limericks and Counsels of Perfection” (1908)
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Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the day-time, and falling into at night.

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) American poet

Letter to Whitter “Hal” Bynner and Arthur Davidson Ficke (1920)
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Beauties in vain their pretty Eyes may roll;
Charms strike the Sight, but Merit wins the Soul.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744) English poet

The Rape of the Lock, Canto 5, l. 33 (1712)
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If a man is not rising upwards to be an angel, depend upon it, he is sinking downwards to be a devil. He cannot stop at the beast. The most savage of men are not beasts; they are worse, a great deal worse.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) English poet and critic

Table Talk (30 Aug 1833)
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What Man seeks, to the point of anguish, in his gods, in his art, in his science, is meaning. He cannot bear the void. He pours meaning on events like salt on his food. He denies that life bounces along at random, at the mercy of events, in sound and in fury. He wants it always to be directed, aimed toward a goal, like an arrow.

François Jacob (1920-2013) French biologist, Nobel prize winner in Medicine

The Statue Within: An Autobiography (1987) [tr. Philip (1988)]
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Better to love amiss than nothing to have loved.

George Crabbe (1754-1832) English poet, writer, surgeon, clergyman

Tales in Verse, Tale 14 “The Struggles of Conscience” (1812)

See Tennyson (1849).

A man’s action is only a picture-book of his creed.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet

“Poetry and Imagination,” Letters and Social Aims (1876)
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If you attack Stupidity, you attack an entrenched interest with friends in government and every walk of public life, and you will make small progress against it.

Robertson Davies (1913-1995) Canadian author, editor, publisher

The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks (1949)
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Manners are of more importance than laws. Upon them, in a great measure, the laws depend. The law touches us but here and there, and now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, but a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in. They give their whole form and color to our lives. According to their quality, they aid morals, they supply them, or they totally destroy them.

Edmund Burke (1729-1797) Anglo-Irish statesman, orator, philosopher

Letters on a Regicide Peace, Letter 1 (1796)
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Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition.

Barack Obama (b. 1961) American politician, US President (2009-2017)

Commencement Address, Knox College, Galesburg, IL (4 Jun 2005)
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It’s easy to do anything in victory. It’s in defeat that a man reveals himself.

Floyd Patterson (1935-2006) American professional boxer

(Attributed)
    (Source)

Quoted in Gay Talese, Fame and Obscurity: Portraits (1970).

The trouble with life isn’t that there is no answer, it’s that there are so many answers.

Ruth Benedict (1887-1947) American anthropologist

An Anthropologist at Work, Journal Entry, 7 Jan 1913 (1959)

Character is simply habit long continued.

Plutarch (AD 46-127) Greek historian, biographer, essayist [Mestrius Plutarchos]

Moral Writings [Moralia], “On the Education of Children,” 4.3 [tr. Babbitt and Goodwin]
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Be careful how you live your life, it is the only Gospel many people will ever read.

Hélder Câmara (1909-1999) Brazilian Catholic Archbishop, social and political activist

(Attributed)

Quoted in 1985 in Basta, the national news letter of the Chicago Religious Task Force on Central America.

Alt. trans.: "Watch how you live. Your lives may be the only gospel your brothers and sisters will ever read."

Everyone loves a witch hunt as long as it’s someone else’s witch being hunted.

Walter Kirn (b. 1962) American novelist, literary critic, essayist

Twitter (10 Jan 2011)
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Good general-purpose manners nowadays may be said to consist in knowing how much you can get away with.

Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973) Irish author

“Manners,” Collected Impressions (1950)
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For my own part, I consider the best and most finished type of man to be the person who is always ready to make allowances for others, on the ground that never a day passes without his being in fault himself, yet who keeps as clear of faults as if he never pardoned them in others.

[Atque ego optimum et emendatissimum existimo, qui ceteris ita ignoscit, tamquam ipse cotidie peccet, ita peccatis abstinet tamquam nemini ignoscat.]

Pliny the Younger (c. 61-c. 113) Roman politician, writer [Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus]

Epistles [Epistulae], Book 8, Letter 22 “To Geminus” [tr. J.B.Firth (1900)]
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Alt. trans.: "The highest of characters, in my estimation, is his, who is as ready to pardon the moral errors of mankind, as if he were every day guilty of some himself; and at the same time as cautious of committing a fault as if he never forgave one."

Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, martyr

Letter to Renate and Eberhard Bethge (1944)
    (Source)

Alt. trans.: "It is not the thought but readiness to take responsibility that is the mainspring of action."

Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922-2007) American novelist, journalist

Hocus Pocus (1990)
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Truth is compar’d in Scripture to a streaming fountain; if her waters flow not in a perpetuall progression, they sick’n into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition.

[Truth is compared in Scripture to a streaming fountain; if her waters flow not in a perpetual progression, they sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition.]

John Milton (1608-1674) English poet

Areopagitica (1644)
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Sure, there are differences in degree, but we’ve got to stop comparing wounds and go out after the system that does the wounding.

Florynce "Flo" Kennedy (1916-2000) American lawyer, feminist, civil rights activist

(Attributed)

Quoted in Gloria Steinem, "The Verbal Karate of Florynce R. Kennedy, Esq.," Ms. (Mar 1973).

If television and radio are to be used to entertain all of the people all of the time, then we have come perilously close to discovering the real opiate of the people.

Edward R. Murrow (1908-1965) American journalist

Interview, Television Magazine (Jul 1957)
    (Source)

Also cited in various places as being a speech given at Brandeis University (1958), and (incorrectly) upon receiving the Einstein Award (5 May 1957). Sometimes quoted as "used for the entertainment of the people" and "used for the entertainment of all of the people."

Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic

The Idler, #23 (23 Sep 1758)
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There is only one proof of ability — action.

[Für das Können gibt es nur einen Beweis: das Tun.]

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830-1916) Austrian writer

Aphorisms [Aphorismen], No. 91 (1880) [tr. Wister (1883)]
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(Source (German)). Alternate translation:

There is only one proof of ability: doing it.
[tr. Scrase/Mieder (1994)]

My quarrel with him is, that his works contain nothing worth quoting; and a book that furnishes no quotations is, me judice, no book — it is a plaything.

Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866) English novelist, satirist, poet, merchant

Crochet Castle, ch. 9 (1831)
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Ambition makes more trusty slaves than need.

Ben Jonson (1572-1637) English playwright and poet

Sejanus, His Fall, Act 1, sc. 2 (1603)
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Absence from whom we love is worse than death,
And frustrate hope severer than despair.

William Cowper (1731-1800) English poet

“Hope, like the short-lived ray that gleams awhile”
    (Source)

Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.

Edward Abbey (1927-1989) American anarchist, writer, environmentalist

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness, ch. 4, “Life and Death and All That” (1989)
    (Source)

Sometimes incorrectly quoted as "Belief without action is the ruin of the soul."

Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds, cannot change anything.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic

Everybody’s Political What’s What? (1950 ed.)
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There are no grades of vanity, there are only grades of ability in concealing it.

Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]

Mark Twain’s Notebook, 1898 [ed. Paine (1935)]

The only people who can still strike us as normal are those we don’t yet know very well.

Alain de Botton (b. 1969) Swiss-British author

The Course of Love, “Irreconcilable Desires” (2016)
    (Source)

We can have no better clue to a man’s character than the company he keeps.

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) Italian politician, philosopher, political scientist

The Discourses on Livy, Book 3, ch. 34 (1517) [tr. Thomson (1883)]
    (Source)

Alt. trans.: "There is no better indication of a man's character than the company which he keeps."

The worst barbarity of war is that it forces men collectively to commit acts against which individually they would revolt with their whole being.

Ellen Key (1849-1926) Swedish feminist and writer

War, Peace, and the Future, ch. 6 (1916) [tr. Norberg]
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The soul that has no fixed goal loses itself; for as they say, to be everywhere is to be nowhere.

[L’âme qui n’a point de but établi, elle se perd: car comme on dit, c;est n’ètre en aucun lieu que d’être partout.]

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) French essayist

Essays, Book 1, ch. 8 “Of Idleness” (1580-88) [tr. Frame (1943)]
    (Source)

Alt. trans.: "The soul that has no established aim loses itself, for, as it is said, 'He who lives everywhere, lives nowhere.'" [tr. Cotton (1877)]

Alt. trans.: "When the soul is without a definite aim, she gets lost; for, as they say, if you are everywhere you are nowhere." [tr. Screech (1987)]

The proverb referenced is Martial.

Change is the essence of life: be willing to surrender who you are for what you could become.

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) American theologian and clergyman

(Attributed)

Sometimes elided to: "Change is the essence of life: surrender who you are for what you could become."

I don’t think the boy of lively mind is hurt much by going to college. If he encounters mainly jackasses, then he learns the useful lesson that this is a jackass world.

H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) American writer and journalist [Henry Lewis Mencken]

“Editorial,” The American Mercury (April 1926)
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Reprinted in Prejudices: Sixth Series (1927).

Don’t agonize, organize.

Florynce "Flo" Kennedy (1916-2000) American lawyer, feminist, civil rights activist

(Attributed)
    (Source)

Quoted in Gloria Steinem, "The Verbal Karate of Florynce R. Kennedy, Esq.," Ms. (Mar 1973).

To no man will we sell, or deny, or delay, right or justice.

[Nulli vendemus, nulli negabimus, aut differimus rectum aut justiciam.]

(Other Authors and Sources)

Magna Carta, Clause 40 (1215)

Alt. trans.:

• "To no one will we sell, to no one will we refuse or delay, right or justice."
• "To none will we sell, to none will we deny, to none will we delay right or justice."

All books are either dreams or swords,
You can cut, or you can drug, with words.

Amy Lowell (1874-1925) American poet

“Sword Blades and Poppy Seed,” l. 291 (1914)
    (Source)