- 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.
-
Quote Search
- 18,966 quotes and counting ...
Authors
Author Cloud
Adams, John • Aristotle • Bacon, Francis • Bible • Bierce, Ambrose • Billings, Josh • Butcher, Jim • Chesterfield (Lord) • Chesterton, Gilbert Keith • Churchill, Winston • Cicero, Marcus Tullius • Einstein, Albert • Eisenhower, Dwight David • Emerson, Ralph Waldo • Franklin, Benjamin • Fuller, Thomas (1654) • Gaiman, Neil • Galbraith, John Kenneth • Gandhi, Mohandas • Hazlitt, William • Heinlein, Robert A. • Hoffer, Eric • Homer • Huxley, Aldous • Ingersoll, Robert Green • 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 • Sophocles • Stevenson, Robert Louis • Twain, Mark- Only the 45 most quoted authors are shown above. Full author list.
Most Quoted Authors
Topic Cloud
action age America beauty belief change character death democracy education ego error evil faith fear freedom future God government happiness history human nature humanity integrity leadership liberty life love morality perspective politics power pride progress reality religion science society success truth virtue war wealth wisdom writing- I've been adding topics since 2014, so not all quotes have been given one. Full topic list.
Popular Quotables
- “Wealth and Poverty,” speech, National… (9,283)
- Agamemnon, ll. 175-183 [tr. Johnston (2007)] (6,428)
- “The Lesson for Today,” A Witness Tree (1942) (6,162)
- “The Triumph of Stupidity” (10 May 1933) (5,437)
- Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962) (4,934)
- “On The Conduct of Life” (1822) (4,584)
- “Tips for Teens,” Social Studies (1981) (4,432)
- “In Search of a Majority,” Speech,… (4,067)
- “A Cult of Ignorance,” Newsweek (21 Jan 1980) (3,919)
- “Get a Knife, Get a Dog, but Get Rid of… (3,795)
Recent Feedback
- Snyder, Timothy - On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (2017) | WIST on “Notes on Nationalism” (1945)
- Dave on Notice to email subscribers
- Nina on Notice to email subscribers
- ~~Admin - Notice to email subscribers | WIST on Subscribe/Feeds
- France, Anatole - (Spurious) | WIST on A Writer’s Notebook (1949)
- Dave on The Odyssey [Ὀδύσσεια], Book 6, l. 180ff [Odysseus to Nausicaa] (c. 700 BC) [tr. Rieu (1946)]
- Marcus Aurelius - (Spurious) | WIST on Meditations, Book 2, #11 [tr. Gill (2014)]
- Elizabeth II - Address to the Nation (5 Apr 2020) | WIST on “We’ll Meet Again” (1939) [with Hughie Charles]
- Pratchett, Terry - The Last Hero (2001) | WIST on Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs, #3366 (1732)
- King, Stephen - On Writing, ch. 12 (2000) | WIST on In “Ten Rules for Writing Fiction,” The Guardian (20 Feb 2010)
Quotations about procrastination
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
procrastination is the
art of keeping
up with yesterdayDon Marquis (1878-1937) American journalist and humorist
archy and mehitabel, ch. 12 “certain maxims of archy” (1927)
(Source)
There are so many things that we wish we had done yesterday, so few that we feel like doing today.
Mignon McLaughlin (1913-1983) American journalist and author
The Complete Neurotic’s Notebook (1981)
Because as writers we’ll do anything — organize the closet, clean the garage — to avoid writing.
Lynn Vincent (b. 1962) American author, journalist
In The New Yorker, “Lives of the Saints” (15 Oct 2012)
(Source)
JERRY: Writing is also one of those things like … I’d rather fill in all the “o”s in the phone book. [Laughs]. You know what I mean? Anything is more fun than trying to write songs.
BOB: I’d rather be in the dentist’s chair. The blank page is the most frightening, most horrifying, the most toothy, snarling, god-awful thing I can imagine.
JERRY: Any excuse to not do it is good enough.
BOB: Man, look at those dishes mounting up. How can I work in this pigsty?
Jerry Garcia (1942-1995) American singer-songwriter and guitarist
Interview of Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir by Jon Sievert, Guitar Player Magazine (20 May 1993)
By doing just a little every day, I can gradually let the task completely overwhelm me.
Ashleigh Brilliant (b. 1933) Anglo-American writer, epigramist, cartoonist
Pot-Shots, #1194
Anyway, if you stop tellin’ people it’s all sorted out after they’re dead, they might try sorting it all out while they’re alive.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Good Omens (1990) [with Neil Gaiman]
Work is the greatest thing in the world — so we should save some of it for to-morrow.
If it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would get done.
Rita Mae Brown (b. 1944) American author, playwright
Bingo (1988)
(Source)
The phrase can actually be found prior to Brown's formulation (1, 2), but Brown appears to have been the first to popularize it, and it entered into much wider use after her.
Frequent variant: "If not for the last minute ...."
Man has no greater enemy than himself. I have acted contrary to my sentiments and inclination; throughout our whole lives we do what we never intended, and what we proposed to do, we leave undone.
Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374) Italian scholar and poet [a.k.a. Petrarch]
(Attributed)
(Source)
Quoted in Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann, An Examination of the Advantages of Solitude and of Its Operations, ch. 5 (1783) [tr. F.S. (1808)].
There are millions of ways to not be writing.
Rod Serling (1924-1975) American screenwriter, playwright, television producer, narrator
“Rod Serling: The Facts of Life,” Interview with Linda Brevelle (4 Mar 1975)
(Source)
If you have a good idea, get it out there. For every idea I’ve realized, I have ten I sat on for a decade till someone else did it first. Write it. Shoot it. Publish it. Crochet it, sauté it, whatever. MAKE.
Joss Whedon (b. 1964) American screenwriter, author, producer [Joseph Hill Whedon]
“Dollhouse’s Joss Whedon Answers Your Questions,” Hulu Blog (9 Mar 2009)
(Source)
MARIAN: No, please, not tonight. Maybe tomorrow.
HAROLD: Oh, my dear little librarian. You pile up enough tomorrows, and you’ll find you are left with nothing but a lot of empty yesterdays.
Meredith Willson (1902-1984) American composer, songwriter, flutist, conductor, playwright
The Music Man (1957)
One thing that’s good about procrastination is that you always have something planned for tomorrow.
G. B. Stern (1890-1973) British writer [Gladys Bronwyn Stern]
(Attributed)
If you want to make an easy job seem mighty hard, just keep putting it off.
Olin Miller (fl. early 20th C) American humorist
(Attributed)
The secret of my incredible energy and efficiency in getting work done is a simple one. I have based it very deliberately on a well-known psychological principle and have refined it so that it is now almost too refined. I shall have to begin coarsening it up again pretty soon. The psychological principle is this: anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.
Robert Benchley (1889-1945) American humorist
“How to Get Things Done,” Chicago Tribune (2 Feb 1930)
At thirty, man suspects himself a fool;
Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan;
At fifty, chides his infamous delay,
Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve;
In all the magnanimity of thought
Resolves, and re-resolves; then dies the same.
And why? Because he thinks himself immortal.
All men think all men mortal but themselves.Edward Young (1683-1765) English poet
“The Complaint: or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death, & Immortality,” Part 1 “On Death, Life, and Immortality,” l. 418ff (1742–1745)
(Source)
Procrastination and worry are the twin thieves that will try to rob you of your brilliance — but even the smallest action will drive them from your camp.
(Other Authors and Sources)
Gil Atkinson
To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing.
(Other Authors and Sources)
Eva Young
