- WIST is my personal collection of quotations, curated for thought, amusement, turn of phrase, historical significance, or sometimes just (often-unintentional) irony.
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Popular Quotables
- “Wealth and Poverty,” speech, National… (7,271)
- Agamemnon, ll. 175-183 [tr. Johnston (2007)] (5,864)
- “The Lesson for Today,” A Witness Tree (1942) (5,863)
- “The Triumph of Stupidity” (10 May 1933) (4,976)
- Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962) (4,878)
- “On The Conduct of Life” (1822) (3,984)
- “In Search of a Majority,” Speech,… (3,856)
- “Get a Knife, Get a Dog, but Get Rid of… (3,714)
- “A Cult of Ignorance,” Newsweek (21 Jan 1980) (3,202)
- “The Historian as Participant,” Daedalus… (3,201)
Most Quoted Authors
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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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- 26-Oct-20 - De Officiis [On Duties; On Moral Duty; The Offices], Book 1, ch. 10 / sec. 33 (44 BC) [tr. Miller (1913)] | WIST on Heauton Timoroumenos [The Self-Tormentor], Act 4, sc. 5, l. 48 (l. 796).
- 24-Oct-20 - Daniel Onyirioha on The Imitation of Christ, Book 1, ch. 25 [tr. Stanhope].
- 20-Oct-20 - Members of a whole – ICMDA Blogs on Poem on Humanity.
- 19-Oct-20 - Dave on (Attributed).
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Quotations about status
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
Ill can he rule the great, that cannot reach the small.
Edmund Spenser (c. 1552-1599) English poet
The Faerie Queene, Book 5, Canto 2, st. 43 (1589-96)
(Source)
RESPECTABILITY, n. The social status of people whose sins haven’t quite caught up with them.
Edmund H. Volkart (1919-1992) American sociologist, researcher, editor
The Angel’s Dictionary: A Modern Tribute to Ambrose Bierce (1986)
There are two kinds of people in one’s life — people whom one keeps waiting — and the people for whom one waits.
S. N. Behrman (1893-1973) American playwright, screenwriter, biographer, writer [Samuel Nathaniel Behrman]
Biography, Act 1 [Feydak] (1933)
(Source)
Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.
The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don’t turn against him, they crush those beneath them.
Emily Brontë (1818-1848) British novelist, poet [pseud. Ellis Bell]
Wuthering Heights, ch. 11 [Heathcliff] (1847)
(Source)
All the pieces wish to be, if not a player, at least the piece the players are most concerned with.
Steven Brust (b. 1955) American writer, systems programmer
Dragon (1998)
He is not well-bred, that cannot bear Ill-Breeding in others.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher
Poor Richard’s Almanack (1748)
Men are more ready to sacrifice their lives than their livelihood: and to sacrifice their own importance often comes hardest of all.
B. H. Liddell Hart (1895-1970) English soldier, military historian (Basil Henry Liddell Hart)
Thoughts on War, ch. 10 (1944)
To assert dignity is to lose it.
Rex Stout (1886-1975) American writer
The League of Frightened Men, ch. 4 [Wolfe] (1935)
