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Explore 5101 quotes by Writers

We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all.

Joan Didion

The Year of Magical Thinking

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Topic

Mortality Loss The human condition

Author

Joan Didion

Source

The Year of Magical Thinking

Genre

Autobiography and memoir

Language

English

Time

2005 2000s 21st century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Didion, Joan. The Year of Magical Thinking. Alfred A. Knopf, 2005, ch. 17.

I feel about airplanes the way I feel about diets. It seems to me that they are wonderful things for other people to go on.

Jean Kerr

More information about this quote

Topic

Fear of flying Airplanes Air travel

Author

Jean Kerr

Source

The Snake Has All the Lines

Statement Type

Metaphor, analogy and simile

Language

English

Time

1960 1960s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Kerr, Jean. The Snake Has All the Lines. Doubleday, 1960.

For the creation of a master-work of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not enough without the moment.

Matthew Arnold

More information about this quote

Topic

Literature

Author

Matthew Arnold

Language

English

Time

1865 1860s 19th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Arnold, Matthew. "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time." Essays in Criticism: First Series. London and Cambridge: Macmillan and Co., 1865.

Current Citation

Arnold, Matthew. "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time." Culture and Anarchy and Other Selected Prose. Penguin Classics, 2015.

A large nose is in fact the sign of an affable man, good, courteous, witty, liberal, courageous, such as I am.

Edmond Rostand

More information about this quote

Topic

Noses Body parts

Author

Edmond Rostand

Source

Cyrano de Bergerac

Medium

Play

Language

French

Time

1897 1890s 19th century

Authentication Score 2

Original Citation

Rostand, Edmond. Cyrano de Bergerac. 27 Dec. 1897, Theatre de la Porte Saint-Martin, Paris, France, act 1, sc. 4.

Current Citation

Rostand, Edmond. Cyrano de Bergerac, translated by Lowell Bair. Signet, 2012, act 1, sc. 4.

Like all young men, you greatly exaggerate the difference between one young woman and another.

George Bernard Shaw

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Read Major Barbara at Project Gutenberg

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Topic

Women Men and women

Speaker

Undershaft

Author

George Bernard Shaw

Source

Major Barbara

Medium

Play

Genre

Drama (play)

Language

English

Time

1905 1900s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Shaw, George Bernard. Major Barbara. 28 Nov. 1905, Court Theatre, London, England, UK, act 3.

Current Citation

Shaw, George Bernard. Major Barbara. Man and Superman, John Bull's Other Island, and Major Barbara. Oxford University Press, 2021, act 3.

Work is not always required of a man. There is such a thing as sacred idleness.

George MacDonald

Wilfrid Cumbermede

More information about this quote

Topic

Work Idleness Leisure

Author

George MacDonald

Source

Wilfrid Cumbermede

Medium

Novel

Language

English

Time

1872 1870s 19th century

Authentication Score 2

Citation

MacDonald, George. Wilfred Cumbermede. New York: Charles Scribner & Co., 1872.

The gentle mind by gentle deeds is known. For a man by nothing is so well exposed, as by his manners.

Edmund Spenser

More information about this quote

Topic

Gentleness Manners

Author

Edmund Spenser

Source

The Faerie Queene

Medium

Poem

Genre

Epic poem

Language

English

Time

1596 1590s 16th century

Era

European Renaissance

Authentication Score 0

Original Citation

Spenser, Edmund. The Faerie Queene. London: William Ponsonbie, 1596, bk. 6, canto 3.

Current Citation

Spenser, Edmund. The Faerie Queene, Book Six and the Mutabilitie Cantos, edited by Andrew Hadfield and Abraham Stoll. Hackett Publishing Company, 2007, bk. 6, canto 3.

Immature love says: "I love you because I need you." Mature love says: "I need you because I love you."

Erich Fromm

More information about this quote

Topic

Nature of love Love

Author

Erich Fromm

Source

The Art of Loving

Genre

Philosophical literature

Language

English

Time

1956 1950s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Fromm, Erich. The Art of Loving. Harper & Brothers, 1956, ch. 2.

It's worth remembering this: freedom of expression sustains all the other freedoms we enjoy.

Ian McEwan

Read this speech at dickinson.edu

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Topic

Freedom of speech and expression Political theory Politics Freedom

Speaker

Ian McEwan

Source

2015 Dickson College commencement address

Medium

Speech

Genre

Commencement address

Language

English

Time

2015 2010s 21st century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

McEwan, Ian. Commencement address. Commencement ceremony. 17 May 2015, Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA, USA.

How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is clearly Ocean.

More information about this quote

Topic

Ocean and sea The earth

Speaker

Arthur C. Clarke

Language

English

Time

1990 1990s 20th century

Authentication Score 1

Citation

Clarke, Arthur C. Quoted in "Hands Up for the Gaia Hypothesis." Written by James E. Lovelock. Nature Journal, 8 Mar. 1990.

Bring me the sunflower, crazed with the love of light.

Eugenio Montale

More information about this quote

Topic

Sunflowers Flowers

Author

Eugenio Montale

Medium

Poem

Language

Italian

Time

1925 1920s 20th century

Authentication Score 1

Original Citation

Montale, Eugenio. "Portami il girasole [Bring me the sunflower]." Ossi di seppia [Cuttlefish Bones]. c. 1925.

Current Citation

Montale, Eugenio. "Bring me the sunflower." Montale: Poems, translated by Jonathan Galassi. Everyman's Library, 2020.

The whole effect of Christianity was to transfer the drama onto the moral plane.

Andre Gide

The Counterfeiters

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Topic

Christianity

Author

Andre Gide

Source

The Counterfeiters

Medium

Novel

Language

French

Time

1925 1920s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Gide, Andre. Les Faux-monnayeurs [The Counterfeiters]. Nouvelle Revue Francaise, 1925, pt. 1, ch. 13.

Current Citation

Gide, Andre. The Counterfeiters, translated by Dorothy Bussy. Penguin Books, 1990, pt. 1, ch. 13.

To be heir to the throne is not a position; it is a predicament.

Alan Bennett

More information about this quote

Topic

The Royal Family Monarchy

Speaker

Prince of Wales

Author

Alan Bennett

Source

The Madness of George III

Medium

Play

Language

English

Time

1991 1990s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Bennett, Alan. The Madness of George III. 28 Nov. 1991, Lyttelton Theatre of the National Theatre, London, England, UK, pt. 2.

Things get passed around so easily on the internet. And fact becomes fiction and fiction becomes fact, without anyone stepping in to arbitrate and say, what are your sources?

Hilary Mantel

More information about this quote

Topic

Fake news The internet Truth vs. fiction Truth

Speaker

Hilary Mantel

Source

Art of Fiction interview Paris Review

Medium

Interview Magazine

Language

English

Time

2015 2010s 21st century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Mantel, Hilary. Quoted in "The Art of Fiction No. 226." Interviewed by Mona Simpson. Paris Review, no. 212, Spring 2015, www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6360/art-of-fiction-no-226-hilary-mantel.

It was at Rome, on the 15th of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed fryars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.

Edward Gibbon

Read Memoirs of My Life and Writings at Project Gutenberg

More information about this quote

Topic

Inspiration Rome

Author

Edward Gibbon

Source

Memoirs of My Life and Writings Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon

Genre

Autobiography and memoir

Language

English

Time

1794 1790s 18th century

Era

Age of Enlightenment

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Gibbon, Edward. "Memoirs of My Life and Writings." Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon, edited by John Sheffield. Vol. 1, London: A Strahan and T. Cadell Jun. and W. David, 1796.

Current Citation

Gibbon, Edward. Memoirs of My Life, edited by Betty Radice. Penguin, 1984.

It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives its most distinctive characteristic.

James Weldon Johnson

More information about this quote

Topic

American music

Author

James Weldon Johnson

Source

Black Manhattan

Language

English

Time

1930 1930s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Johnson, James Weldon. Black Manhattan. Alfred A. Knopf, 1930, ch. 11.

Maximilien Robespierre was nothing but the hand of Jean Jacques Rousseau, the bloody hand that drew from the womb of time the body whose soul Rousseau had created.

Heinrich Heine

More information about this quote

Topic

French Revolution Power of ideas Politics is downstream of culture

Author

Heinrich Heine

Source

Germany After Luther

Genre

Religious literature Philosophical literature

Language

German

Time

1834 1830s 19th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Heine, Heinrich. "De l'Allemagne depuis Luther [Germany after Luther]." Revue des deux Mondes, Dec. 1834.

Current Citation

Heine, Heinrich. "On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany." On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany and Other Writings, translated by Howard Pollack-Milgate, edited by Terry Pinkard. Cambridge University Press, 2007.

When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something that lasts longer than we do.

Hermann Hesse

Narcissus and Goldmund

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Topic

Purpose of art Art

Author

Hermann Hesse

Source

Narcissus and Goldmund

Medium

Novel

Language

German

Time

1930 1930s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Hesse, Herman. Narziß und Goldmund [Narcissus and Goldmund]. Fischer Verlag, 1930.

Current Citation

Hesse, Herman. Narcissus and Goldmund, translated by Ursule Molinaro. Bantam, 1984.

Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.

Aldous Huxley

More information about this quote

Topic

Technological progress Progress

Author

Aldous Huxley

Source

Ends and Means

Medium

Essay

Genre

Philosophical literature

Statement Type

Paradox

Language

English

Time

1937 1930s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Huxley, Aldous. Ends and Means (an Enquiry Into the Nature of Ideals and Into the Methods Employed for Their Realization). Chatto & Windus, 1937, ch. 1.