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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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Quotations about secret
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
The holiest of holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart,
When the full river of feeling overflows.Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
“Holidays,” Keramos, and Other Poems (1878)
(Source)
BOB: You know I’m retired from hero work.
EDNA: As am I, Robert, yet here we are!Brad Bird (b. 1957) American director, animator and screenwriter [Phillip Bradley Bird]
The Incredibles (2004)
(Source)
Secrets with girls, like loaded guns with boys,
Are never valued till they make a noise.George Crabbe (1754-1832) English poet, writer, surgeon, clergyman
Tales of the Hall, “The Maid’s Story” (1819)
(Source)
Alcohol: A liquid good for preserving almost everything except secrets.
Other Authors and Sources
Charles Wayland Towne, The Foolish Dictionary (1905)
Thy friend has a friend, and thy friend’s friend has a friend; be discreet.
The Talmud (AD 200-500) Collection of Jewish rabbinical writings
Babylonian Talmud, Baba Bathra 28b
(Source)
Noted as a common saying. The summary "be discreet" does not appear in the actual Talmud translations I found, but seems to be an explanation from early Christian reviews of the Talmud for when the verse is given as a stand-alone proverb.
Content thyself to be obscurely good.
When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway,
The post of honour is a private station.Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Cato, Act 4, sc. 1, l. 319 (1713)
We know so little about each other. We lie mostly submerged, like ice floes, with our visible social selves projecting only cool and white.
Ian McEwan (b. 1948) English novelist and screenwriter
Amsterdam (1998)
The grandest of heroic deeds are those which are performed within four walls and in domestic privacy.
Jean-Paul Richter (1763-1825) German novelist, art historian, aesthetician [pseud. Jean-Paul]
(Attributed)
In Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)
Once you get it into your head that somebody is controlling events, you can interpret everything in that light and find no reasonable certainty anywhere.
Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) Russian-American author, polymath, biochemist
Foundation’s Edge, ch. 12 “Agent” (1982)
There is nothing so despicable as a secret society that is based upon religious prejudice and that will attempt to defeat a man because of his religious beliefs. Such a society is like a cockroach — it thrives in the dark. So do those who combine for such an end.
William Howard Taft (1857-1930) US President (1909-13) and Chief Justice (1921-1930)
Speech, Young Men’s Hebrew Association, New York (20 Dec 1914)
Censorship, in my opinion, is a stupid and shallow way of approaching the solution to any problem. Though sometimes necessary, as witness a professional and technical secret that may have a bearing upon the welfare and very safety of this country, we should be very careful in the way we apply it, because in censorship always lurks the very great danger of working to the disadvantage of the American nation.
Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) American general, US President (1953-61)
Speech, Associated Press luncheon, New York (24 Apr 1950)
To make another person hold his tongue, be you first silent.
[Alium silere quod voles, primus sile.]
Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BC-AD 65) Roman statesman, philosopher, playwright [Lucius Annaeus Seneca]
Phaedra [Hippolytus], l. 867 (c. AD 50)
(Source)
Sometimes given as "Alium silere quod valeas, primus sile." Alt. trans.: "Where thou wouldst have another silence keep, keep silence first thyself." [tr. F Miller (1907)]
The secret thoughts of a man run over all things holy, prophane, clean, obscene, grave, and light, without shame, or blame.
The measure of a man’s real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) English writer and politician
(Attributed)
Character is what you are in the dark.
Dwight Lyman "D. L." Moody (1837-1899) American evangelist and publisher
Sermon
Attributed by his son in William R. Moody, D. L. Moody, ch. 66 (1930), but quoted without citation before that (e.g., in Saint Andrew's Cross (Nov 1907), and The Outlook (6 Jun 1917)).
Please don’t lie to me, unless you’re absolutely sure I’ll never find out the truth.
Ashleigh Brilliant (b. 1933) Anglo-American writer, epigramist, cartoonist
Pot-Shots
Everyone is a moon and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Following the Equator, ch. 66, epigraph (1897)
(Source)
