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. 1,158,808 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
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“Thanks very much for taking this magical moment and reminding me that joy is ephemeral, pain is forever.”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2024 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: See John Oliver's Hilarious Reaction to Donald Trump's Iowa Caucus Victory (Exclusive) (15 January 2024)
“Hope and joy are crucial here; they are the fuel that powers the ongoing fight for equality. And while there is a lot of fear and uncertainty right now, it is worth remembering that progress -- while not always linear -- is always possible.”
John Oliver (born 1977) first seen 2022 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last Week Tonight -- "Transgender Rights II" (ff. 0:25:46) (17 October 2022)
“The structure of cities, the architecture of houses, squares, gardens, public walks, gateways, railway stations, etc – all these provide us with the basic principles of a great Metaphysical aesthetic.. .We, who live under the sign of the Metaphysical alphabet, we know the joy and sorrows to be found in a gateway, a street corner, a room, on the surface of a table, between the sides of a box…”
Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Ghiberti to Gainsborough, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 233
“The winds of war came sweeping cruel, The flower would not cry, Oh, how it broke the freeman's heart, To see the first rose die. Some soldiers plucked the garden's joy, And left a burning mark, Upon the silver petalled bloom, Now fettered in he dark.”
Bobby Sands (1954–1981) said by 1981 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Poetry, at least the kind I write, is written out of immediate need; it is written out of pain, joy, and experience too great to be borne until it is ordered into words. And then it is written to be shared.”
Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Ordering of Love: The New and Collected Poems of Madeleine L'Engle (2005)
“Here we are living in a world of "identity crises," and most of us have no idea what an identity is. Half the problem is that an identity is something which must be understood intuitively, rather than in terms of provable fact. An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers. To define everything is to annihilate much that gives us laughter and joy.”
Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are not to retreat from life, pinning our hopes on ‘elsewhere.’ but to know that we will come to that final destination best by living full here and now, be it through joy, or pain, or a mix of both.”
Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For to me, this word Art, in its largest sense, signifies those who take pleasure in their work... Artist-carpenters who adjust with joy dovetails and mortises; artist-masons who handle lovingly their trowels; artist-cab drivers, proud of treating their horses humanely-what an ideal state of society that would be.”
Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) said by 1917 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Admiration, is a joy daily kindled afresh... I talk out of the -fullness of life; it belongs to me in a sense larger than that of ownership.”
Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) said by 1917 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment. To such an extent indeed that one day, finding myself at the deathbed of a woman who had been and still was very dear to me, I caught myself in the act of focusing on her temples and automatically analyzing the succession of appropriately graded colors which death was imposing on her motionless face.”
Claude Monet (1840–1926) first seen 1926 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Claude Monet: Les Nymphéas (1926) by Georges Clemenceau, Ch. 2.
“I have found a truth that humanity needs, that brings unspeakable joy to human hearts and homes, that brightens all the life, that assuages sorrow, that dispels care, that kills the materialistic spirit of our age, and lifts mankind into noble thought and life”
Benjamin Fish Austin (1850–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Filipinos don't realize that victory is the child of struggle, that joy blossoms from suffering, and redemption is a product of sacrifice.”
José Rizal (1861–1896) first seen 1890 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Como se gobiernan las Filipinas" (How one governs in the Philippines), published in La Solidaridad (15 December 1890)
“The first time he saw somebody else he felt a mixture of emotions; fear, joy, expectation and a kind of disappointment that this wilderness was not his alone.”
Iain Banks (1954–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“..But there is better. Simplicity, being direct. Everything else is just a game, just building castles in the sky.. .Basically I don't think of anything when I paint. I see colours. I strive with joy to convey them on to my canvas just as I see them. They arrange themselves as they choose, any old way. Sometimes that makes a picture. I'm brainless animal. Very content if I could be just that..”
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) said by 1906 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Being, not doing, is my first joy.”
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When I'm on stage, I'm trying to do one thing: bring people joy. Just like church does. People don't go to church to find trouble, they go there to lose it.”
James Brown (1933–2006) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Brown, J. & Tucker, B.B. (1986). James Brown: The Godfather of Soul. Macmillan: New York.
“So keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
Molly Ivins (1944–2007) first seen 1993 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Fun's in the Fight." originally published in Mother Jones (1993), also quoted by John Nichols, The Nation, "Remembering Molly Ivins" (January 31, 2007).
“Work is my joy.. .Work is my therapy, I don't know anybody who loves work as much as I do.”
Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We could stand for a century Staring, with our heads cocked In the broad daylight at this thing Joy Landlocked In bodies that don't keep Dumbstruck with the sweetness of being Until we don't be”
Joanna Newsom (born 1982) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Joy! Again, around—a pause, a sound—a song: a way a lone a last a loved a long. A cave, a grave, a day: arise, ascend. (Areion, Rharian; go free and graze. Amen.) A shore, a tide, unmoored—a sight, abroad: A dawn, unmarked, undone, undarked (a god). No time. No flock. No chime, no clock. No end. White star, white ship—Nightjar, transmit: transcend!”
Joanna Newsom (born 1982) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Where in the Schrödinger equation do you put the joy of being alive?”
Eugene Wigner (1902–1995) first seen 1988 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted by Freeman Dyson from a private conversation, Infinite in All Directions (1988)
“Well it's bulls and blood, It's dust and mud, It's the roar of a Sunday crowd. It's the white in his knuckles, The gold in the buckle, He'll win the next go 'round. It's boots and chaps, It's cowboy hats, It's spurs and latigo. It's the ropes and the reins, And the joy and the pain, And they call the thing rodeo.”
Garth Brooks (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“At sixty I look back on a life of deep disappointments, of withered hopes, of unlooked for suffering, of severe discipline. Yet I have sometimes tasted exquisite joy and have found solace for many a woe in the innocence and earnest love of Theodore's children. But for this my life would have little to record of mundane pleasures.”
Sarah Grimké (1792–1873) first seen 1853 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Harriot Hunt (1853), as quoted in The Grimké Sisters from South Carolina: Pioneers for Woman's [sic] Rights and Abolition, p. 241, by Gerda Lerner. Editorial Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN 0195106032.
“The only joy in the world is to begin. It is good to be alive because living is beginning, always, every moment. When this sensation is lacking—as when one is in prison, or ill, or stupid, or when living has become a habit—one might as well be dead.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Her air, her manners, all who saw admir'd; Courteous though coy, and gentle though retir'd; The joy of youth and health her eyes display'd, And ease of heart her every look convey'd.”
George Crabbe (1754–1832) first seen 1807 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Parish Register (1807), Part ii, "Marriages".
“A slow singer, but loading each phrase With history’s overtones, love, joy And grief learned by his dark tribe In other orchards and passed on Instinctively as they are now, But fresh always with new tears.”
R. S. Thomas (1913–2000) said by 2000 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Time is a corrosive fluid, dissolving motivation, destroying novelty, and leaching the joy from life. But forgetting is a fraught process, one that is prone to transcription errors and personality flaws. Delete the wrong pattern, and you can end up becoming someone else. Memories exhibit dependencies, and their management is one of the highest medical art forms.”
Charles Stross (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Grieve not for me. … You and I shall smile together, so long as our two forms appear different in the maya-dream of God. Finally we shall merge as one in the Cosmic Beloved; our smiles shall be His smile, our unified song of joy vibrating throughout eternity to be broadcast to God-tuned souls!”
Yukteswar Giri (1855–1936) first seen 1936 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Yogananda reports that Yukteswar Giri spoke these words to him in person on 19 June 1936, more than three months after Yukteswar Giri's death.
“Your street, rich street or poor Used to always be sure, on your street There's a place in your heart you know from the start Can't be complete outside of the street Keep moving on through the joy and the pain Sometimes you got to look back To the street again Would you prefer all those castles in Spain? Or the view of your street from your window pane?”
Van Morrison (born 1945) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A garden must combine the poetic and the mysterious with a feeling of serenity and joy.”
Luis Barragán (1902–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A fountain brings us peace, joy and restful sensuality and reaches the epitome of its very essence when by its power to bewitch it will stir dreams of distant worlds.”
Luis Barragán (1902–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Music exalts each joy, allays each grief, Expels diseases, softens every pain, Subdues the rage of poison, and the plague.”
John Armstrong (poet) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Death is an endless night so awful to contemplate that it can make us love life and value it with such passion that it may be the ultimate cause of all joy and all art.”
Paul Theroux (born 1941) first seen 1991 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Hockney’s Alphabet, D is for Death, ed. Stephen Spender (1991)
“When you were a tadpole and I was a fish In the Paleozoic time, And side by side on the ebbing tide We sprawled through the ooze and slime, Or skittered with many a caudal flip Through the depths of the Cambrian fen, My heart was rife with the joy of life, For I loved you even then.”
Langdon Smith (1858–1908) said by 1908 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So nixt to simmer, winter bein, Nixt eftir comfort, cairis kein, Nixt derk midnicht the mirthful morrow; Nixt eftir joy ay cumis sorow. So is this warld, and ay hes bein.”
William Dunbar (1460–1520) said by 1520 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I sit here in the upper circle surrounded by copper and gold, and smile with joy under my fly net as all the light, glory and quivering brightness passes slowly and freely before my eyes. Nothing happier than this. I shout and laugh at my immense wealth, all free and without responsibility. Who could steal this from me? No one. Oh that I could roll some up— as at present.”
Arthur Streeton (1867–1943) said by 1943 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Reported in Mollie Hetherington, Famous Australians (1983), p. 252.
“Joy and Sorrow have as source the very soul who planned their course.”
Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“20. The activity affected by causes like fainting, sleep, excessive joy, grief, possession by spirits, fear etc goes to the heart, its own place.”
Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have a lot of respect for Ovechkin as a player. I like his enthusiasm. I know the kid has a zest for life and a joy for the game.”
Alexander Ovechkin (born 1985) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ryan Miller, interview in John Vogl (December 4, 2006) "Ovechkin's star eclipsed by few - Briere hit a rare misstep for Capitals' boy wonder", The Buffalo News, p. D7.
“For him no silver cressets shed their light, No eager joy-bells sounded through the night From city minster, or from village tower; No loud "hurrahs," sent from deep-chested men, Lifted the midnight mist from off the glen In celebration of his natal hour.”
John Stanyan Bigg (1828–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our wearier spirit faints, Vexed in the world‘s employ: His soul was of the saints; And art to him was joy.”
Lionel Johnson (1867–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I recalled when I worked in the woods and the bars of Madras, Oregon. That short-haired joy and roughness— America—your stupidity. I could almost love you again.”
Gary Snyder (born 1930) first seen 1992 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: I Went into the Maverick Bar, from No Nature; New and Selected Poems (1992)
“Spring was in the air. But such radiant, joyous spring as one coming out of the dark shadows of the Ghetto never could dream. Earth and sky seemed to sing with the joy of an unceasing holiday. Rebecca Yudelson felt as if she had suddenly stepped into fairyland where the shadow of sorrow or sickness, where the black blight of poverty had never been. (beginning of "Dreams and Dollars")”
Anzia Yezierska (1880–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Pluck the fruit and taste the pleasure, Youthful lordings, of delight; Whilst occasion gives you seizure, Feed your fancies and your sight: After death, when you are gone, Joy and pleasure is there none.”
Thomas Lodge (1558–1625) first seen 1591 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Robert the Devil (1591), p. 42
“I hope that when he smiles at me He does not guess my joy and pain, For if he did, he is too kind To ever look my way again.”
Sara Teasdale (1884–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Oh, is it not enough to be Here with this beauty over me? My throat should ache with praise, and I Should kneel in joy beneath the sky. Oh, beauty are you not enough?”
Sara Teasdale (1884–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every truthful work of art must express a definite feeling, must move the spirit of the spectator either to joy or to sadness.. ..rather than try to unite all sensations, as thought mixed together with a twirling stick.”
Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) said by 1840 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Death, go somewhere, get lost! I’m not done as yet – Joy still flows from the amphora of colors into my cupped hands.”
Ghani Khan (1914–1996) said by 1996 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Adam had learned the jolly deed of kind: He took her in his arms and there and then Like the clean beasts, embracing from behind, Began in joy to found the breed of men.”
A. D. Hope (1907–2000) first seen 1955 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Imperial Adam", st. 7, ll. 25–28. The Wandering Islands (1955)
“Only by living at the edge of death can you understand the indescribable joy of life.”
James Clavell (1921–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source