Famous quotes
Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
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“Fool! All that is, at all, Lasts ever, past recall; Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure: What entered into thee, That was, is, and shall be: Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.”
Charles Caleb Colton (1777–1832) said by 1832 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“At thirty, man suspects himself a fool; Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan; At fifty chides his infamous delay, Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve; In all the magnanimity of thought Resolves, and re-resolves; then dies the same.”
Edward Young (1683–1765) said by 1765 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nature never makes blunders; when she makes a fool she means it.”
Josh Billings (1818–1885) said by 1885 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Lord, I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing!”
Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) said by 1745 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Men may change their climate, but they cannot change their nature. A man that goes out a fool cannot ride or sail himself into common sense.”
Joseph Addison (1672–1719) said by 1719 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every fool knoweth that hatreds are the cinders of affection.”
Walter Raleigh (1552–1618) first seen 1593 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Sir Robert Cecil (10 May 1593)
“A man is a fool who sits looking backward from himself in the past. Ah! what shallow, vain conceit there is in man! Forget the things that are behind. That is not where you live. Your roots are not there. They are in the present; and you should reach up into the other life.”
Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Busy old fool, unruly Sun, Why dost thou thus, Through windows, and through curtains call on us? Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run? Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide Late school-boys and sour 'prentices, Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride, Call country ants to harvest offices; Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.”
John Donne (1572–1631) said by 1631 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.”
Carl Jung (1875–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Mysterium Coniunctionis, from The Collected Works of C. G. Jung (1966)
“The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.”
George Santayana (1863–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“More knave than fool.”
Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) said by 1616 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In France there are three kinds of professions: the church, the sword, and the long robe. Each hath a sovereign contempt for the other two. For example, a man who ought to be despised only for being a fool is often so because he is a lawyer.”
Montesquieu (1689–1755) said by 1755 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is unsafe to take your reader for more of a fool than he is.”
W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) first seen 1954 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ten Novels and Their Authors (1954)
“I thought I should be a fool to allow work to interfere with a delight in the passing moment that I might never enjoy again so fully.”
W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You bloody fool, you've killed the wrong man.”
W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) first seen 1927 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Hairless Mexican (1927)
“I am for the most part so convinced that everything is lacking in basis, consequence, justification, that if someone dared to contradict me, even the man I most admire, he would seem to me a charlatan or a fool.”
Emil Cioran (1911–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is no such thing," meditated Bill, "as bad whiskey. Some whiskeys just happen to be better than others. But a man shouldn't fool with booze until he's fifty; then he's a damnfool if he doesn't.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Attributed in William Faulkner of Oxford (1965) p. 110
“A serious ape whom none take seriously, Obliged in this fool's world to earn his nuts By hard buffoonery.”
George Eliot (1819–1880) said by 1880 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He [the Philosopher] should have made many mistakes and been saved often by the skin of his teeth, for the skin of one's teeth is the most teaching thing about one. He should have been, or at any rate believed himself, a great fool and a great criminal. He should have cut himself adrift from society, and yet not be without society.”
Samuel Butler (novelist) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One can bring no greater reproach against a man than to say that he does not set sufficient value upon pleasure, and there is no greater sign of a fool than the thinking that he can tell at once and easily what it is that pleases him. To know this is not easy, and how to extend our knowledge of it is the highest and the most neglected of all arts and branches of education.”
Samuel Butler (novelist) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.”
Samuel Butler (novelist) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Never was patriot yet, but was a fool.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I well believe, thou wouldst be great as he; For every man's a fool to that degree: All wish the dire prerogative to kill; Ev'n they would have the power who want the will.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Fool, not to know that love endures no tie, And Jove but laughs at lovers' perjury.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To his county farm the fool confined; Rude work well suited with a rustic mind.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thou hop’st with sacrifice of oxen slain To compass wealth, and bribe the god of gain To give thee flocks and herds, with large increase; Fool! to expect them from a bullock’s grease.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Please thy pride, and search the herald’s roll, Where thou shalt find thy famous pedigree, Drawn from the root of some old Tuscan tree, And thou, a thousand off, a fool of long degree.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[Guido] Oh, my Ianthe, I live but in you, And I will win thee, through each obstacle By tyranny of fortune raised, my own, My best heart's treasure ! (he snatches her hand) [Manfred] Wild fool ! she is your sister !”
Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) first seen 1823 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (12th April 1823) Dramatic Scene. Ianthe — Guido — Manfred.
“The bitterest creature under heaven is the wife who discovers that her husband’s bravery is only bravado, that his strength is only a uniform, that his power is but a gun in the hands of a fool.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It takes brains to make money, but any dam fool can inherit. P.S.: I never inherited any money.”
Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) said by 1915 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Do you take me for such a fool to think I'd make contact with one that tries to hide what he don't know to begin with.”
“The one was Texas medicine, the other was just a railroad gin. And, like a fool, I mixed them; and it strangled up my mind.”
“It was not only that I could not become spiteful, I did not know how to become anything; neither spiteful nor kind, neither a rascal nor an honest man, neither a hero nor an insect. Now, I am living out my life in my corner, taunting myself with the spiteful and useless consolation that an intelligent man cannot become anything seriously, and it is only the fool who becomes anything.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Part 1, Chapter 1 (tr. Constance Garnett, 1918)
“First of all, this prince is an idiot, and, secondly, he is a fool--knows nothing of the world, and has no place in it.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Part 4, Chapter 5 (tr. Frederick Whishaw, 1887)
“It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool's paradise!”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Part 4, Chapter 5 (tr. Frederick Whishaw, 1887)
“I know what wages beauty gives, How hard a life her servant lives, Yet praise the winters gone: There is not a fool can call me friend, And I may dine at journey’s end With Landor and with Donne.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Starting in a hollowed log of wood — some thousand miles up a river, with an infinitesimal prospect of returning! I ask myself 'Why?' and the only echo is 'damned fool!... the Devil drives'.”
Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) said by 1890 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Burton to Lord Houghton as quoted in The Devil Drives: A life of Sir Richard Burton (1984) by Fawn Brodie.
“[Footnote:] Other foolish birds include the Semipalmated Plover, the Marbled Godwit, the Carolina Mosshead, the Tasmanian Googlenose and the Fool Hen or Franklin Grouse of the Rockies.”
Will Cuppy (1884–1949) said by 1949 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I suppose you are a fool to do it [express a political view as an artist], but if you happen to be more interested in the political question, than the size of your audience, then it doesn't matter.”
Orson Welles (1915–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What any woman saw in some particular man was beyond the comprehension of the average intelligent male. It just was so. A woman who could be intelligent about everything else in the world could be a complete fool when it came to some particular man.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Any medical man who predicts exactly when a patient will die, or exactly how long he will live, is bound to make a fool of himself. The human factor is always incalculable. The weak have often unexpected powers of resistance, the strong sometimes succumb.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What beats me — it always does — is how a man can be so clever and yet be such a perfect fool.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For reasons that I leave to a higher psychiatry, Jr. wanted a war in Iraq. ...Jr. is really pretty vague, you know. He just wanted to go... "Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! We gotta stand tall, ya know? We can't cut and run, yeah, ya know what I mean." We've had bad presidents in the past, but we've never had a G-- D--d fool!”
Gore Vidal (1925–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Don't liken me to that [SOB]. Anybody that lets his public policies be mixed up with religious prejudice is a plain [GD] fool.”
Huey Long (1893–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On Adolf Hitler and Nazism. Williams, Huey Long (1969), p. 761
“What are you trying to do, Kerouac?" I'd ask myself in my sleepingbag at night, "trying to deny reality with all this Buddha stuff, ya jerk?" ... "Poor detailed immaculate incarnate fool, and you call yourself Self ... Take off your coat and crash wits." And I realized that all this Buddhism was a STRAIN at telling the untellable emptiness yet that nothing was truer, a perfect paradox.”
Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) first seen 1958 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Meditation in the Woods (1958)
“It will serve to show how articulated language comes into being. I let the vowels fool around. I let the vowels quite simply occur, as a cat meows . . . Words emerge, shoulders of words, legs, arms, hands of words. Au, oi, uh. One shouldn't let too many words out. A line of poetry is a chance to get rid of all the filth that clings to this accursed language.. .Dada is the heart of words.”
Hugo Ball (1886–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I say that the true artist-seer, the heavenly fool who can and does produce beauty, is mainly dazzled to death by his own scruples, the blinding shapes and colors of his own sacred human conscience.”
J. D. Salinger (1919–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When you consider socialism, do not fool yourself about its nature. Remember that there is no such dichotomy as “human rights” versus “property rights.” No human rights can exist without property rights.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Opportunities come infrequently. When it rains gold, put out the bucket, not the thimble. "25 Best Warren Buffett Quotes" The Motley Fool (28 September 2014)”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source