Your Famous Quotes

As the continual dropping of water has a tendency to wear away the hardest and most flinty substance, so likewise shall we, abounding in good works, and causing our examples to shine forth as the sun at noon day, melt their callous hearts, and render sinewless the arm of sore oppression.

George Lawrence (lived 19th century)
U.S. abolitionist.

However much you and all of us may desire it, there is not much hope of redemption without the shedding of blood. If you must bleed, let it all come at once—rather die freemen, than live to be slaves.

Henry Highland Garnet (1815 - 1882)
U.S. clergyman and abolitionist

The most stable and therefore most healthy self-esteem is based on deserved respect from others rather than on external forms or celebrity and unwarranted adulation.

Abraham Maslow (1908 - 1970)
U.S. psychologist

Ah, yes, I wrote the “Purple Cow”—
I’m sorry, now, I wrote it!
But I can tell you, anyhow,
I’ll kill you if you quote it.

Gelett Burgess (1866 - 1951)
U.S. humorist.

School yourself to demureness and patience. Learn to inure yourself to drudgery in science. Learn, compare, collect the facts.

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849 - 1936)
Russian physiologist.

Hoist up saile while gale doth last,
Tide and wind stay no man’s pleasure.

Robert Southwell (1561 - 1595)
English poet and martyr.

A Tartar horn tugs at the north wind,
Thistle Gate shines whiter than the stream.
The sky swallows the road to Kokonor.
On the Great Wall, a thousand miles of moonlight.

Li He (791 - 817)
Chinese poet.

The nuns who never take a bath without wearing a bathrobe all the time. When asked why, since no man can see them, they reply “Oh, but you forget the good God.”

Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970)
British philosopher and mathematician.

The leadership of western man in the human world is coming to an end, not because western civilization is materially bankrupt or has lost its economic or military strength, but because the Western order has played its part and no longer possesses that “stock” of “values” which give it its predominance.

Sayyid Qutb (1903? - 1966)
Egyptian philosopher and political leader.

A company’s…ability to generate those exceptional returns in a knowledge-based economy is dependent, in large measure, upon its ability to attract, retain, and develop the right work force—and whether it succeeds in unleashing their mental capabilities.

Jeffrey Pfeffer (1946 - )
U.S. management writer.

Do not feel badly if your kindness is rewarded with ingratitude; it is better to fall from your dream clouds than from a third-story window.

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839 - 1908)
Brazilian novelist and short-story writer.

Joy is the sweet voice, joy the luminous cloud—
We in ourselves rejoice!
And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight,
All melodies the echoes of that voice,
All colours a suffusion from that light.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 - 1834)
British poet.

He who would have you believe that he is waiting for the inspiration of genius, is in reality at a loss how to begin, and is at last delivered of his monsters, with difficulty and pain.

Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723 - 1792)
British painter and writer.

Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife
Their sober wishes never learn’d to stray;
Along the cool sequester’d vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

Thomas Gray (1716 - 1771)
British poet.

Maybe the only thing worse than having to give gratitude constantly all the time, is having to receive it.

William Faulkner (1897 - 1962)
U.S. novelist.