- 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… (7,147)
- “The Lesson for Today,” A Witness Tree (1942) (5,848)
- Agamemnon, ll. 175-183 [tr. Johnston (2007)] (5,813)
- “The Triumph of Stupidity” (10 May 1933) (4,924)
- Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962) (4,874)
- “On The Conduct of Life” (1822) (3,950)
- “In Search of a Majority,” Speech,… (3,842)
- “Get a Knife, Get a Dog, but Get Rid of… (3,692)
- “A Cult of Ignorance,” Newsweek (21 Jan 1980) (3,150)
- “The Historian as Participant,” Daedalus… (3,133)
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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
- 23-Sep-20 - Molly Bawn (1878) | WIST on “Of the Standard of Taste” (1739).
- 21-Sep-20 - Shenandoah (1965) | WIST on (Attributed).
- 21-Sep-20 - ***Dave Does the Blog on Leviathan, Pt. I, ch. 13 (1651).
- 17-Sep-20 - The Devil's Disciple, Act 2 (1897) | WIST on Thus Spoke Zarathustra [Also Sprach Zarathustra], Part 2, “Of the Compassionate [Von den Mitleidigen]” (1892) [tr. Hollingdale (1961)].
- 17-Sep-20 - Tristam Shandy, 1.17 (1759-67) | WIST on Religio Medici, Part 1, sec. 25 (1642) [ed. Symonds (1886)].
- 16-Sep-20 - Dave on “To Those Born Later [An die Nachgeborenen],” (1938) [tr. Horton (2008)].
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Quotations about obvious
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
Familiarity breeds contempt, while rarity wins admiration.
[Parit enim conversatio contemptum; raritas conciliat admirationem.]
Apuleius (c. 124 - c. 170 AD) Numidian writer, philosopher, rhetorician [Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis]
On the God of Socrates [De Deo Socratis], ch. 4 [tr. Bohn’s (1853)]
Discussing why the gods do not mingle with humanity. Alt. trans.: The first part of the phrase is also used as the moral in the traditional English translation of Aesop's "The Fox and the Lion."
Khaavren stood. “I will go now.”
“If you don’t mind, I shall await you here.”
“Certainly,” said Khaavren, smiling. “That will make it easier for you to look through my files.”
“Now my friend, have you ever known me to do anything so obvious?”
“Never.” Khaavren stood and strode to the door. “Which is exactly what makes it subtle.”
Steven Brust (b. 1955) American writer, systems programmer
Tiassa (2011)
Fine natures are like fine poems; a glance at the first two lines suffices for a guess into the beauty that waits you, if you read on.
Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873) English novelist and politician
My Novel, or Varieties in English Life (1853)
If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands.
Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English writer
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (1987)
Like many men of genius, he could not understand why things obvious to him should not be so at once to other people, and found it easier to believe that they were corrupt than that they could be so stupid.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
The Apple Cart, Preface (1928)
If the world were clear, art would not exist.
Albert Camus (1913-1960) Algerian-French novelist, essayist, playwright
“Absurd Creation,” The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem neat, plausible, and wrong.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) American writer and journalist [Henry Lewis Mencken]
“The Divine Afflatus,” New York Evening Mail (16 Nov 1917)
(Source)
Reprinted in Prejudices: Second Series (1920) and A Mencken Chrestomathy, ch. 25 (1949).
Variants:
- "There is always an easy solution to every human problem -- neat, plausible, and wrong."
- "For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong."
