Give Me a Random Quote: 472 Real Lines With Author, Work and Year: how it works
Press New quote and this random quote generator gives one line that a real writer put in a book, poem, play or speech. It holds 472 quotations in seven chips. Every quotation names its work and year, and none is later than 1930. Each was found word for word in its source text.
Found in the work, or left out
Many famous lines were never said by the person credited. Each quotation here was matched against a Project Gutenberg edition of the work, or for four lines a National Archives or National Park Service transcript. To check one yourself, search the work's title at Project Gutenberg and look for the line in the text. Sayings that belong to no work are left out. Thoreau's line about quiet desperation ends where it ends in Walden; the second half often added is not in the book.
What the year under a quote means
It is the year the work first appeared: first publication for a book or poem, first staging for an Oscar Wilde play, first printing for Shakespeare. Twelfth Night shows 1623, the year of the First Folio. Little Women came out in two parts, so a line from Part Two shows 1869. The wording follows the edition we read, which may be a later printing or a named translation. A slash marks a line break in verse.
Tips
For a card or toast, tap Friendship and love, set the count to 5 and keep the line that fits.
For a guess-the-author round, read the quote aloud and hold the smaller line back.
No quote under a chip repeats until all have come up, so a class can open every lesson with a new one.
Questions and answers
Does the page write the quotes itself?
No. Every line was written by the author named under it, in the work named there, and people chose and checked all 472. The page only shuffles them. For something true rather than well said, draw from the random facts.
Why is there nothing after 1930?
Works that old are in the public domain, so anyone can read the whole text and check a line in it. Every author died more than 70 years ago, which keeps out living people and film lines. The newest work is a novel from 1925.
Can I ask for a quote on one subject?
Yes. Tap a chip and every draw stays on it. The address keeps the chip, so a link ending in #wit opens on Wit and humor. That chip holds 111 lines, 17 each from Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde. Freedom and country holds 41, seven from Abraham Lincoln. Courage and effort is the largest at 117.
A person who has not done one-half his day's work by ten o'clock, runs a chance of leaving the other half undone.Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, 1847.
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road.Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road, in Leaves of Grass, 1856.
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, / Or what's a heaven for?Robert Browning, Andrea del Sarto, in Men and Women, 1855.
An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.G. K. Chesterton, All Things Considered, 1908.
Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 1849.
The better part of valour is discretion.William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1, first printed 1598.
Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor, first printed 1602.
Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful.Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818.
The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings.Kate Chopin, The Awakening, 1899.
The busy bee has no time for sorrow.William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1790–93.
The cat in gloves catches no mice.Benjamin Franklin, The Way to Wealth, 1758.
Cowards die many times before their deaths; / The valiant never taste of death but once.William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, first printed 1623.
Diligence is the mother of good luck.Benjamin Franklin, The Way to Wealth, 1758.
Do what you can, with what you've got, where you are.Squire Bill Widener, quoted by Theodore Roosevelt in An Autobiography, 1913.
Do your best wherever it is, and keep up your good name.Anna Sewell, Black Beauty, 1877.
Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist but you have ceased to live.Mark Twain, Following the Equator, 1897.
Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.Benjamin Franklin, The Way to Wealth, 1758.
For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, 1879.
For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.Rudyard Kipling, The Second Jungle Book, 1895.
God helps them that help themselves.Benjamin Franklin, The Way to Wealth, 1758.
Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed down-stairs a step at a time.Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson, 1894.
The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 1, 1776.
The heights by great men reached and kept / Were not attained by sudden flight.Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Ladder of St. Augustine, in The Courtship of Miles Standish, 1858.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune.Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road, in Leaves of Grass, 1856.
Here to-day, up and off to somewhere else to-morrow! Travel, change, interest, excitement!Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows, 1908.
Hope is the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul.Emily Dickinson, Poems: Second Series, 1891.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast.Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man, 1733–34.
However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names.Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854.
I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, 1847.
I am the master of my fate: / I am the captain of my soul.William Ernest Henley, Invictus, 1888.
I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, 1847.
I exist as I am, that is enough.Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, in Leaves of Grass, 1855.
I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing.Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, 1851.
I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection.Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 1, 1776.
I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, 1851.
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, in Leaves of Grass, 1855.
I try all things; I achieve what I can.Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, 1851.
I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion.Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 1849.
I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship.Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, Part Two, 1869.
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854.
If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.G. K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World, 1910.
If adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad.Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, 1817.
If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside.Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess, 1905.
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind, 1820.
If you can keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs and blaming it on you.Rudyard Kipling, If, in Rewards and Fairies, 1910.
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be.Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854.
If you shed tears when you miss the sun, you also miss the stars.Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds, 1916.
In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.Ralph Waldo Emerson, Prudence, in Essays: First Series, 1841.
Insist on yourself; never imitate.Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance, in Essays: First Series, 1841.
Isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, 1908.
It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done.Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, 1859.
It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life, speech of April 10, 1899.
It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action.Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, 1847.
It is not the critic who counts.Theodore Roosevelt, Citizenship in a Republic, speech of April 23, 1910.
It's been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, 1908.
Let us have faith that right makes might.Abraham Lincoln, Cooper Union address, 1860.
Let us, then, be up and doing, / With a heart for any fate.Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, A Psalm of Life, 1838.
Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818.
Little strokes fell great oaks.Benjamin Franklin, The Way to Wealth, 1758.
Lives of great men all remind us / We can make our lives sublime.Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, A Psalm of Life, 1838.
Long is the way / And hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.John Milton, Paradise Lost, 1667.
Love casts out fear, and gratitude can conquer pride.Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, 1868.
The man with a new idea is a Crank until the idea succeeds.Mark Twain, Following the Equator, 1897.
The mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.John Milton, Paradise Lost, 1667.
Much has been given us, and much will rightfully be expected from us.Theodore Roosevelt, Inaugural Address, 1905.
Much madness is divinest sense / To a discerning eye.Emily Dickinson, Poems, 1890.
My advice is, never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time.Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, 1850.
My courage always rises with every attempt to intimidate me.Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, 1813.
Necessity is the mother of invention.Aesop, Fables, translated by George Fyler Townsend, 1867.
Next to trying and winning, the best thing is trying and failing.L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, 1908.
No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1790–93.
No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery, 1901.
Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you, / You must travel it for yourself.Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, in Leaves of Grass, 1855.
Nothing ever comes to me, that is worth having, except as the result of hard work.Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery, 1901.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.Ralph Waldo Emerson, Circles, in Essays: First Series, 1841.
Nothing will come of nothing.William Shakespeare, King Lear, first printed 1608.
Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, 1871.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.William Shakespeare, Henry V, first printed 1600.
Only that day dawns to which we are awake.Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854.
Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.George Eliot, Adam Bede, 1859.
Our doubts are traitors, / And make us lose the good we oft might win / By fearing to attempt.William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, first printed 1623.
The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.Ralph Waldo Emerson, New England Reformers, in Essays: Second Series, 1844.
Self-help is the best help.Aesop, Fables, translated by George Fyler Townsend, 1867.
The sleeping fox catches no poultry.Benjamin Franklin, The Way to Wealth, 1758.
Slow but steady wins the race.Aesop, Fables, translated by George Fyler Townsend, 1867.
Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em.William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, first printed 1623.
The stars are not afraid to appear like fireflies.Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds, 1916.
Success is counted sweetest / By those who ne'er succeed.Emily Dickinson, Poems, 1890.
Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching.Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, 1861.
The sun is but a morning star.Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854.
Sweet are the uses of adversity.William Shakespeare, As You Like It, first printed 1623.
There are no gains without pains.Benjamin Franklin, The Way to Wealth, 1758.
There is a tide in the affairs of men, / Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, first printed 1623.
There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise.Jack London, The Call of the Wild, 1903.
These are the times that try men's souls.Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 1, 1776.
They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.Edgar Allan Poe, Eleonora, 1842.
This above all: to thine own self be true.William Shakespeare, Hamlet, first printed 1603.
Though she be but little, she is fierce.William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, first printed 1600.
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses, 1842.
To be great is to be misunderstood.Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance, in Essays: First Series, 1841.
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses, 1842.
To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque, 1881.
True courage is in facing danger when you are afraid.L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, 1900.
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance, in Essays: First Series, 1841.
Watch and pray, dear, never get tired of trying, and never think it is impossible to conquer your fault.Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, 1868.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan, first staged 1892.
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.William Shakespeare, Henry V, first printed 1600.
We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, 1814.
We have it in our power to begin the world over again.Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776.
We mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.Second Continental Congress, Declaration of Independence, 1776.
We never know how high we are / Till we are called to rise.Emily Dickinson, Poems: Third Series, 1896.
What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance, in Essays: First Series, 1841.
What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 1, 1776.
Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well.Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, 1850.
Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist.Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance, in Essays: First Series, 1841.
Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, 1871.
Work is love made visible.Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, 1923.
Books and learning 67
A little learning is a dangerous thing.Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, 1711.
A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right.Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776.
A word is dead / When it is said, / Some say. / I say it just / Begins to live / That day.Emily Dickinson, Poems: Third Series, 1896.
Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life.Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque, 1881.
Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854.
The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1890.
Come forth into the light of things, / Let Nature be your teacher.William Wordsworth, The Tables Turned, 1798.
Conventionality is not morality.Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, 1847.
The cruellest lies are often told in silence.Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque, 1881.
Endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 1859.
Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, 1801.
Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1865.
Example is more powerful than precept.Aesop, Fables, translated by George Fyler Townsend, 1867.
Experience is the only thing that brings knowledge.L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, 1900.
Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.Benjamin Franklin, The Way to Wealth, 1758.
Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him.Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery, 1901.
The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.William Shakespeare, As You Like It, first printed 1623.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice.William Shakespeare, Hamlet, first printed 1603.
The great thing in all education is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.William James, Talks to Teachers on Psychology, 1899.
He ate and drank the precious words, / His spirit grew robust.Emily Dickinson, Poems, 1890.
He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859.
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854.
I declare, after all, there is no enjoyment like reading!Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, 1813.
I like good strong words that mean something.Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, 1868.
I never saw a moor, / I never saw the sea; / Yet know I how the heather looks, / And what a wave must be.Emily Dickinson, Poems, 1890.
I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, first staged 1895.
Ignorance is the parent of fear.Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, 1851.
The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, 1836.
Isn't it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about?L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, 1908.
It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1892.
It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data.Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1892.
It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.George Eliot, Middlemarch, 1871.
O wad some Power the giftie gie us / To see oursels as ithers see us!Robert Burns, To a Louse, 1786.
The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, 1817.
The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head.G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 1908.
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854.
Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.Francis Bacon, Of Studies, in Essays, 1625 edition.
Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope.F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, 1925.
Say not, "I have found the truth," but rather, "I have found a truth."Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, 1923.
Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure.Jane Austen, Emma, 1815.
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, 1858.
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.Francis Bacon, Of Studies, in Essays, 1625 edition.
Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience.Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1792.
Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves.Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1865.
Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There's no better rule.Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, 1861.
There is grandeur in this view of life.Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 1859.
There is no frigate like a book / To take us lands away.Emily Dickinson, Poems: Third Series, 1896.
There is no such thing as "the Queen's English."Mark Twain, Following the Equator, 1897.
There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.G. K. Chesterton, Heretics, 1905.
There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1892.
There is properly no history, only biography.Ralph Waldo Emerson, History, in Essays: First Series, 1841.
Time makes more converts than reason.Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776.
To define is to limit.Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1890.
Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson, 1894.
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness.Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, 1869.
The truth is rarely pure and never simple.Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, first staged 1895.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.Mark Twain, Following the Equator, 1897.
The unexamined life is not worth living.Plato, Apology, translated by Benjamin Jowett, 1871.
Want of care does us more damage than want of knowledge.Benjamin Franklin, The Way to Wealth, 1758.
We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us.Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds, 1916.
What is now proved was once only imagined.William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1790–93.
When in doubt, tell the truth.Mark Twain, Following the Equator, 1897.
When you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of the Four, 1890.
The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles, 1902.
The years teach much which the days never know.Ralph Waldo Emerson, Experience, in Essays: Second Series, 1844.
You can't pray a lie.Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1884.
You see, but you do not observe.Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1892.
Nature and seasons 58
A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature.Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854.
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.John Keats, Endymion, 1818.
All good things are wild and free.Henry David Thoreau, Walking, 1862.
And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, 1923.
And what is so rare as a day in June?James Russell Lowell, The Vision of Sir Launfal, 1848.
The bee is not afraid of me, / I know the butterfly.Emily Dickinson, Poems, 1890.
The bird wishes it were a cloud. The cloud wishes it were a bird.Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds, 1916.
By plucking her petals you do not gather the beauty of the flower.Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds, 1916.
CABBAGE, n. A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911.
Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.John Muir, Our National Parks, 1901.
The cut worm forgives the plough.William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1790–93.
The day is done, and the darkness / Falls from the wings of Night.Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Day Is Done, in The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems, 1845.
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, / Sermons in stones, and good in everything.William Shakespeare, As You Like It, first printed 1623.
Going to the mountains is going home.John Muir, Our National Parks, 1901.
The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship.Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, 1836.
He prayeth best who loveth best, / All things both great and small.Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, 1798.
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854.
How happy is the little stone / That rambles in the road alone.Emily Dickinson, Poems: Second Series, 1891.
How it is that animals understand things I do not know, but it is certain that they do understand.Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess, 1905.
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars.Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, in Leaves of Grass, 1855.
I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.Willa Cather, O Pioneers!, 1913.
I love not Man the less, but Nature more.Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto IV, 1818.
I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd.Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, in Leaves of Grass, 1855.
I wandered lonely as a Cloud / That floats on high o'er Vales and Hills.William Wordsworth, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, 1807.
I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, 1908.
In the woods, we return to reason and faith.Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, 1836.
In Wildness is the preservation of the World.Henry David Thoreau, Walking, 1862.
Into each life some rain must fall.Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Rainy Day, in Ballads and Other Poems, 1841.
It is not down in any map; true places never are.Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, 1851.
Let life be beautiful like summer flowers and death like autumn leaves.Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds, 1916.
Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, 1925.
Meditation and water are wedded for ever.Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, 1851.
My heart leaps up when I behold / A Rainbow in the sky.William Wordsworth, My Heart Leaps Up, 1807.
Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, 1836.
Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.Ralph Waldo Emerson, History, in Essays: First Series, 1841.
Nature makes the locust with an appetite for crops; man would have made him with an appetite for sand.Mark Twain, Following the Equator, 1897.
Nature never did betray / The heart that loved her.William Wordsworth, Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, 1798.
Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.John Muir, Our National Parks, 1901.
O my Luve's like a red, red rose, / That's newly sprung in June.Robert Burns, A Red, Red Rose, 1794.
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, first printed 1609.
The pedigree of honey / Does not concern the bee; / A clover, any time, to him / Is aristocracy.Emily Dickinson, Poems, 1890.
The roots below the earth claim no rewards for making the branches fruitful.Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds, 1916.
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.John Keats, To Autumn, 1820.
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?William Shakespeare, Sonnet 18, 1609.
Stars are beautiful, but they may not take an active part in anything, they must just look on for ever.J. M. Barrie, Peter and Wendy, 1911.
That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.Willa Cather, My Ántonia, 1918.
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods.Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto IV, 1818.
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854.
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee.Emily Dickinson, Poems: Third Series, 1896.
The voice of the sea speaks to the soul.Kate Chopin, The Awakening, 1899.
We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel.Anna Sewell, Black Beauty, 1877.
We come and go, but the land is always here.Willa Cather, O Pioneers!, 1913.
We need the tonic of wildness.Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854.
What's in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet.William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, first printed 1597.
When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra, 1911.
Where you tend a rose, my lad, / A thistle cannot grow.Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden, 1911.
Who has seen the wind? / Neither I nor you.Christina Rossetti, Sing-Song, 1872.
The world is so full of a number of things, / I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.Robert Louis Stevenson, A Child's Garden of Verses, 1885.
Friendship and love 73
A crowd is not company.Francis Bacon, Of Friendship, in Essays, 1625 edition.
A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud.Ralph Waldo Emerson, Friendship, in Essays: First Series, 1841.
A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.Ralph Waldo Emerson, Friendship, in Essays: First Series, 1841.
A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony, in a moment.Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, 1813.
A loving heart was better and stronger than wisdom.Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, 1850.
ACQUAINTANCE, n. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911.
All mankind love a lover.Ralph Waldo Emerson, Love, in Essays: First Series, 1841.
Business, you know, may bring money, but friendship hardly ever does.Jane Austen, Emma, 1815.
Camerado, I give you my hand!Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road, in Leaves of Grass, 1856.
The course of true love never did run smooth.William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, first printed 1600.
Each time you happen to me all over again.Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence, 1920.
Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds, 1916.
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, in Leaves of Grass, 1855.
For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, 1923.
For there is no friend like a sister / In calm or stormy weather.Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market, 1862.
Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, 1817.
God bless Us, Every One!Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, 1843.
Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.Mark Twain, Following the Equator, 1897.
Grow old along with me! / The best is yet to be.Robert Browning, Rabbi Ben Ezra, in Dramatis Personae, 1864.
The happiest people are those who do the most for others.Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery, 1901.
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, 1877; Constance Garnett translation, 1901.
Happy is the house that shelters a friend!Ralph Waldo Emerson, Friendship, in Essays: First Series, 1841.
Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend, 1865.
His little, nameless, unremembered acts / Of kindness and of love.William Wordsworth, Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, 1798.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese, 1850.
How far that little candle throws his beams! / So shines a good deed in a naughty world.William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, first printed 1600.
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is / To have a thankless child!William Shakespeare, King Lear, first printed 1608.
I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.Ralph Waldo Emerson, Friendship, in Essays: First Series, 1841.
I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854.
I shot an arrow into the air, / It fell to earth, I knew not where.Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Arrow and the Song, in The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems, 1845.
I would permit no man, no matter what his colour might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery, 1901.
If I can stop one heart from breaking, / I shall not live in vain.Emily Dickinson, Poems, 1890.
If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.Jane Austen, Emma, 1815.
If music be the food of love, play on.William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, first printed 1623.
It is your human environment that makes climate.Mark Twain, Following the Equator, 1897.
Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think.L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, 1908.
Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1890.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments.William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116, 1609.
Let there be spaces in your togetherness.Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, 1923.
Love all, trust a few, / Do wrong to none.William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well, first printed 1623.
Love is a great beautifier.Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, Part Two, 1869.
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind.William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, first printed 1600.
Mankind was my business.Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, 1843.
Oh, 'tis love, 'tis love, that makes the world go round!Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1865.
The only gift is a portion of thyself.Ralph Waldo Emerson, Gifts, in Essays: Second Series, 1844.
The only way to have a friend is to be one.Ralph Waldo Emerson, Friendship, in Essays: First Series, 1841.
Parting is such sweet sorrow.William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, first printed 1597.
People are almost always better than their neighbors think they are.George Eliot, Middlemarch, 1871.
The quality of mercy is not strain'd.William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, first printed 1600.
Reader, I married him.Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, 1847.
The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence, 1920.
Rings and other jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts.Ralph Waldo Emerson, Gifts, in Essays: Second Series, 1844.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot, / And never brought to mind?Robert Burns, Auld Lang Syne, written 1788.
The soul selects her own society, / Then shuts the door.Emily Dickinson, Poems, 1890.
There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well.Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, 1813.
There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, 1850.
There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow-creatures.Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, 1847.
There is no place like home.L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, 1900.
There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends.Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, 1817.
There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour.Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, 1843.
'Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all.Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H., 1850.
To be kind is worth a great deal to other people.Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess, 1905.
To err is human, to forgive, divine.Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, 1711.
Union is strength.Aesop, Fables, translated by George Fyler Townsend, 1867.
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies.Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, 1861.
We hand folks over to God's mercy, and show none ourselves.George Eliot, Adam Bede, 1859.
What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?George Eliot, Middlemarch, 1871.
Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, 1847.
With malice toward none; with charity for all.Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, 1865.
You give but little when you give of your possessions.Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, 1923.
You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, 1813.
You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope.Jane Austen, Persuasion, 1817.
Your children are not your children.Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, 1923.
Wit and humor 72
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance, in Essays: First Series, 1841.
A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!William Shakespeare, Richard III, first printed 1597.
A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, 1814.
A sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use.Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle, 1819.
Accidents will occur in the best-regulated families.Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, 1850.
Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 1908.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness.Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, 1850.
April 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson, 1894.
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854.
Ask no questions, and you'll be told no lies.Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, 1861.
The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley.Robert Burns, To a Mouse, 1786.
Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854.
Blameless people are always the most exasperating.George Eliot, Middlemarch, 1871.
BORE, n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen.Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911.
Brevity is the soul of wit.William Shakespeare, Hamlet, first printed 1603.
Curiouser and curiouser!Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1865.
Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself.Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, in Leaves of Grass, 1855.
Do not blame your food because you have no appetite.Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds, 1916.
EGOTIST, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911.
Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes.Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan, first staged 1892.
Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson, 1894.
For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, 1711.
For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, 1813.
He that lives upon hope will die fasting.Benjamin Franklin, The Way to Wealth, 1758.
Housekeeping ain't no joke.Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, 1868.
I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband, first staged 1895.
I am large, I contain multitudes.Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, in Leaves of Grass, 1855.
I can resist everything except temptation.Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan, first staged 1892.
I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, 1813.
I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them.Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, first staged 1895.
I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1890.
I'd rather take coffee than compliments just now.Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, Part Two, 1869.
I'm nobody! Who are you? / Are you nobody, too?Emily Dickinson, Poems: Second Series, 1891.
If men were angels, no government would be necessary.James Madison, The Federalist No. 51, 1788.
If you would know the value of money, go and try to borrow some.Benjamin Franklin, The Way to Wealth, 1758.
In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity is the vital thing.Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, first staged 1895.
In order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, 1876.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, 1813.
It is easier to stay out than get out.Mark Twain, Following the Equator, 1897.
It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, 1871.
It's but little good you'll do a-watering the last year's crop.George Eliot, Adam Bede, 1859.
Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.Mark Twain, Following the Equator, 1897.
Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson, 1894.
Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan, first staged 1892.
Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.O. Henry, The Gift of the Magi, 1905.
Look before you leap.Aesop, Fables, translated by George Fyler Townsend, 1867.
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias, 1818.
Lord, what fools these mortals be!William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, first printed 1600.
Man is the Only Animal that Blushes. Or needs to.Mark Twain, Following the Equator, 1897.
Memory, my dear Cecily, is the diary that we all carry about with us.Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, first staged 1895.
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband, first staged 1895.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be.William Shakespeare, Hamlet, first printed 1603.
Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.Mark Twain, Following the Equator, 1897.
Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson, 1894.
Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1890.
One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.Jane Austen, Emma, 1815.
One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson, 1894.
PATIENCE, n. A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911.
POSITIVE, adj. Mistaken at the top of one's voice.Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911.
Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, 1858.
Selfishness must always be forgiven, you know, because there is no hope of a cure.Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, 1814.
Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.Jane Austen, Emma, 1815.
There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired.F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, 1925.
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1890.
To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, first staged 1895.
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband, first staged 1895.
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors.G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 1908.
We're all mad here.Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1865.
Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle!Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1865.
Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, 1876.
Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.Mark Twain, Following the Equator, 1897.
YEAR, n. A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911.
Freedom and country 23
A house divided against itself cannot stand.Abraham Lincoln, House Divided speech, 1858.
The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776.
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty.Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, 1863.
Genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom.John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859.
Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus, 1883.
The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.Willa Cather, O Pioneers!, 1913.
I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves.Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1792.
In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free.Abraham Lincoln, Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862.
Justice is the end of government.James Madison, The Federalist No. 51, 1788.
Listen, my children, and you shall hear / Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Paul Revere's Ride, 1860.
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done.Walt Whitman, O Captain! My Captain!, 1865.
The only obligation which I have a right to assume, is to do at any time what I think right.Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 1849.
Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859.
She had not known the weight, until she felt the freedom!Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, 1850.
This nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, 1863.
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered.Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 1, 1776.
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 1849.
We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, 1801.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.Second Continental Congress, Declaration of Independence, 1776.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union.Constitutional Convention, Constitution of the United States, 1787.
Whoever degrades another degrades me.Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, in Leaves of Grass, 1855.
The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it.John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859.
You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 1845.
Life and time 62
A man is a god in ruins.Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, 1836.
A small leak will sink a great ship.Benjamin Franklin, The Way to Wealth, 1758.
All children, except one, grow up.J. M. Barrie, Peter and Wendy, 1911.
All that we see or seem / Is but a dream within a dream.Edgar Allan Poe, A Dream Within a Dream, 1849.
All the world's a stage, / And all the men and women merely players.William Shakespeare, As You Like It, first printed 1623.
An honest man's the noblest work of God.Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man, 1733–34.
Angry people are not always wise.Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, 1813.
Brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world.L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, 1900.
The Child is Father of the Man.William Wordsworth, My Heart Leaps Up, 1807.
Every one is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.Mark Twain, Following the Equator, 1897.
Every sweet hath its sour; every evil its good.Ralph Waldo Emerson, Compensation, in Essays: First Series, 1841.
Exuberance is Beauty.William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1790–93.
For of all sad words of tongue or pen, / The saddest are these: "It might have been!"John Greenleaf Whittier, Maud Muller, 1856.
Goodness is the only investment that never fails.Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854.
The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts.George Eliot, Middlemarch, 1871.
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard / Are sweeter.John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn, written 1819.
Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth.Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, 1861.
Honest people don't hide their deeds.Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, 1847.
Human beings can be awful cruel to one another.Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1884.
I am a part of all that I have met.Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses, 1842.
I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854.
I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, 1925.
I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, 1843.
I wish as well as every body else to be perfectly happy; but, like every body else it must be in my own way.Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility, 1811.
I would always rather be happy than dignified.Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, 1847.
If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us.George Eliot, Middlemarch, 1871.
It is very difficult for the prosperous to be humble.Jane Austen, Emma, 1815.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, 1859.
It's delightful when your imaginations come true, isn't it?L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, 1908.
It's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1865.
Know your own happiness.Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility, 1811.
Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, 1847.
Life is a series of surprises, and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not.Ralph Waldo Emerson, Experience, in Essays: Second Series, 1844.
Life only avails, not the having lived.Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance, in Essays: First Series, 1841.
Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, translated by George Long, 1862.
Lost time is never found again.Benjamin Franklin, The Way to Wealth, 1758.
Love your life, poor as it is.Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854.
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance, in Essays: First Series, 1841.
Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818.
One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it.Jane Austen, Persuasion, 1817.
One to-day is worth two to-morrows.Benjamin Franklin, The Way to Wealth, 1758.
Our life is frittered away by detail.Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854.
Pity is for the living, Envy is for the dead.Mark Twain, Following the Equator, 1897.
Ring out the old, ring in the new.Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H., 1850.
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, 1925.
Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.Willa Cather, My Ántonia, 1918.
Such as are thy habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of thy mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, translated by George Long, 1862.
There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness.Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, 1851.
There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque, 1881.
There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.William Shakespeare, Hamlet, first printed 1603.
There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.Jane Austen, Emma, 1815.
Things do not change; we change.Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854.
Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, 1813.
Till this moment, I never knew myself.Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, 1813.
To be awake is to be alive.Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854.
Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.Francis Bacon, Of Beauty, in Essays, 1625 edition.
We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.William Shakespeare, The Tempest, first printed 1623.
We know what we are, but know not what we may be.William Shakespeare, Hamlet, first printed 1603.
The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well, first printed 1623.
What you are you do not see, what you see is your shadow.Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds, 1916.
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, 1923.
How this list was compiled: All 472 quotations are in the public domain. Each work was first published in 1930 or earlier and its author, and its translator where there is one, died more than 70 years ago, or it is a United States government document. The wording of every quotation was matched on 2026-09-18 against the plain text of a Project Gutenberg edition (https://www.gutenberg.org/), and the address of that edition is saved with the quote in x.src. Four quotations follow other transcripts, fetched the same day: the Constitution (https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript) and the Declaration of Independence (https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript) at the US National Archives, and The New Colossus at the National Park Service (https://www.nps.gov/stli/learn/historyculture/colossus.htm). Years of first publication, first staging or first printing were checked on 2026-09-18 against the Wikipedia article for each work or author (https://en.wikipedia.org/) and against the Gutenberg title pages. The year shown is the year the work first appeared; the wording follows the linked edition, which may be a later printing or, for Tolstoy, Plato, Aesop and Marcus Aurelius, the named English translation. Spelling and punctuation inside a quotation follow the source; small capitals and spaced apostrophes in the Gutenberg texts are set in ordinary type. Where a quotation stops before the end of the source sentence, a closing comma, semicolon or colon was replaced with a full stop, and a quotation cut from the middle of a sentence starts with a capital letter. A slash marks a line break in verse. A line we could not find word for word in a source text was corrected to the source or dropped, and well-known sayings with no traceable work are left out. The attribution lines (the d field) are our own. Fix pass on 2026-09-19: Little Women came out in two volumes, in 1868 and 1869 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Women, read 2026-09-19). Three of the seven Little Women quotations fall after the PART 2 heading in the Gutenberg text (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/514, fetched again that day), so they now read "Little Women, Part Two, 1869"; the other four are in Part One and keep 1868. Last reviewed 2026-09-19. Licence: Public-domain quotations; the selection, topic chips and attribution lines are own work.