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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“In a time when so many artists have learned to confabulate with extremes of horror and alienation, the most daring thing an artist can do is to fill a book, a gallery, or a theater with joy, hope, and beauty.”
Theodore Roszak (scholar) first seen 1997 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: with Betty Roszak, "Deep Form in Art and Nature" Alexandria 4, Vol.4 The Order of Beauty and Nature (1997) ed. David Fideler
“The passion and beauty and joy of science is that we humans have invented a process to understand the universe in a way that is true for everyone. We are finding universal truths.”
“Nature is bottom up. It's compelling and complex, and it fills me with joy and it's inconsistent with the top down view.”
“O Eternal God, now may it please you to burn in love so that we become the limbs fashioned in the love you felt when you begot your Son at the first dawn before all creation. And consider this need which falls upon us, take it from us for the sake of your Son, and lead us to the joy of your salvation.”
Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) said by 1179 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To the crew of LAFD Fire Truck 14, You saved my home. You made a snap decision to stop a rampaging fire that had already destroyed my neighbor's house. In doing so, you spared me incredible heartache. There are no words that can adequately express my gratitude. Maybe I can buy all you guys a nice dinner and you can watch a grown man cry tears of joy over his chicken parm, let me know.”
Chuck Lorre (born 1952) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Compassion, regardless of one’s status or position, is the treasure within every person’s mind. The Venerable Master said, “One can be without anything, but never without compassion.” Compassion is giving others joy and alleviating their suffering. If a person can always embrace compassion and uphold kind thoughts, then naturally there will be less troubles and worries in live.”
Hsing Yun (1927–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The main thing is not to lose your identity and to continue working ... You have a quartet. That is such joy! You can forget everything else in the world. I'm playing a lot of chamber music these days. Tomorrow we were going to give the first performance of two trios, but because of the mourning, all concerts have been canceled.”
David Oistrakh (1908–1974) said by 1974 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Night Stalin Died, New York Times (March 5, 1989).
“Plan for ways to get more enjoyment into your life and you will get more joy out of it.”
“Many do not understand how precarious Western civilisation is and what a joy it is. From it, we get real democracy. From it, we get the sort of intellectual tolerance that allows me to propound something that may be completely alien to you. I'm burying my career so substantially in these interviews that it's painful. But I think there are some questions that demand honest answers.”
John Rhys-Davies (born 1944) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in "Welsh star in race row", by WalesOnline (18 January 2004)
“I continue to explore the science in which I work almost like a child, with naïve joy, curiosity, and amazement.”
Eric Kandel (born 1929) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The six types of song that have shaped human nature—friendship, joy, comfort, knowledge, religion, and love songs—I've come to think are obvious...”
Daniel Levitin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How we treat our fellow creatures is only one more way in which each one of us, every day, writes our own epitaph—bearing into the world a message of light and life or just more darkness and death, adding to the world's joy or to its despair.”
Matthew Scully (born 1959) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Joy can come alive like that, when random pieces of history and rhythm, pause and expectation, melody and lyric, suddenly rearrange themselves into a pattern that leaps up, back against the wall, and catches your heart.”
Andrea Lewis (writer) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Forty Years" Slow Trains Vol.7, Issue 3 (2008)
“He pointed toward the constellation. He did indeed know things. ...But it was hard for me to take it all in. The night was too crowded with joy. And the desert was making all that noise. And next to me, the girl... With every shooting star, she touched my arm and whispered, “Ooh, Mister, look.”
Andrea Lewis (writer) first seen 2022 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Radiant" Raleigh Review (Fall 2022) Vol. 12.2, and Sequestrum (Apr 26, 2023)
“Joy, sadness, confidence, anxiety, love, hatred, fear — all of these feelings and thousands more that make up the human “heart” are as useless to the living dead as the organ of the same name. Who knows if this is humanity’s greatest weakness or strength? The debate continues, and probably will forever.”
Max Brooks (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She had expected to encounter death as a kind of existential depth and had been disappointed. But maybe there was a deeper truth there. Maybe profundity actually is a mode of disappointment. The rhythm of the climax—joy and despair, sex and pain—is of course the currency of life. Death can only ever be a sort of anticlimactic belatedness.”
Adam Roberts (born 1965) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I dare not think of the sun-drenched beaches and the stormy skies, and of the joy of painting them in the sea breezes.”
Eugène Boudin (1824–1898) first seen 1869 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in a letter, from Paris 14 June 1869, to family-friend Ferdinand Martin; as cited by Colin B. Bailey in The Annenberg Collection: Masterpieces of Impressionism and Post-impressionism, publisher, Metropolitan Museu…
“So age succeeds age, and dream succeeds dream, and of the joy of the dreamer no man knoweth but he who dreameth.”
Olive Schreiner (1855–1920) said by 1920 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mathematics fluourished as long as freedom of thought prevailed; it decayed when creative joy gave way to blind faith and fanatical frenzy.”
Tobias Dantzig (1884–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Long ago, many of the small hells that took place in the camps right next to my house showed the joy of living, and tirelessly despite everything”
Osamu Tezuka (1928–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From Save the Planet of glass ; quoted in AA.VV., Osamu Tezuka: A Manga Biography , vol. 1, translated by Marta Fogato, Coconino Press, Bologna, 2000, p. 106.
“Man was created for the sole purpose of rejoicing in God and deriving pleasure from the splendor of His Presence; for this is true joy and the greatest pleasure that can be found.”
Moshe Chaim Luzzatto (1707–1746) said by 1746 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In war, men lose what makes them great. Their creativity. Their wisdom. Their joy. All that's left is their utility. War is not monstrous for making corpses of men so much as it is for making machines of them. And woe to those who have no use in war except to feed the machines.”
Pierce Brown (born 1988) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Making the movie Babe opened my eyes to the intelligence and the inquisitive personalities of pigs. These highly social animals possess an amazing capacity for love, joy and sorrow that makes them remarkably similar to our beloved canine and feline friends.”
James Cromwell (born 1940) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Said in a press statement for SaveBabe campaign, as quoted in "James Cromwell: King Lear, Babe and the Black Panthers" in Nouse (26 October 2007)
“And I to have gained Honour; yet to have learned that Honour doth be but as the ash of Life, if that you not to have Love. And I to have Love. And to have Love is to have all; for that which doth be truly LOVE doth mother Honour and Faithfulness; and they three to build the House of Joy.”
William Hope Hodgson (1877–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To distort our faces with joy, or wail and weep with sorrow, or collapse in agony, or wallow in sentimentality – wasn’t an inviolable human trait but something we can lose simply by leading dull and dreary lives. ‘A rich emotional life,’ she’d written, ‘is a privilege reserved only for the daring few’.”
Ryu Murakami (1952–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To establish a place of work where engineers can feel the joy of technological innovation, be aware of their mission to society, and work to their heart's content.”
Masaru Ibuka (1908–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Masaru Ibuka's mission statement for Sony, cited in: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2004), Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning. p. 57
“Strong joy and grief depend upon the treatment this rudimentary social self receives.”
Charles Cooley (1864–1929) said by 1929 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Her shoulders sagging, her back hunched, her eyelids tired, Rose-Anna sewed for the feast, not daring even to sing for fear of frightening off her joy.”
Gabrielle Roy (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The more the heart is sated with joy, the more it becomes insatiable.”
Gabrielle Roy (1909–1983) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: in Where Nests the Water Hen:Roy,Gabrielle (1951)
“Longer than memory we have known that each animal has its power and place, each a skill, virtue, wisdom, innocence — a special access to the structure and flow of the world. Each surpasses ourselves in some way. Together, sacred, they help hold the cosmos together, making it a joy and beauty to behold, but above all a challenge to understand as story, drama, and sacred play.”
Paul Shepard (1925–1996) first seen 1996 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Others: How Animals Made Us Human (1996), Island Press, 1997, Part V, p. 173.
“All I ask you to remember, in this country of yours, is that every man, woman and child who even sees you with a passing glimpse as you go by, will remember it – remember it with joy, remember it in the words of the old seventeenth-century poet who wrote those famous words – "I did but see her passing by And yet I love her till I die.”
Robert Menzies (1894–1978) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Reception at Parliament House, Canberra, in honour of Queen Elizabeth II (18 February 1963), quoting from the oft-anthologised lyric "There Is a Lady Sweet and Kind" by Thomas Ford — "Transcript 690", PM Transcripts (PM…
“For malice will with joy the lie receive, Report, and what it wishes true, believe.”
Thomas Yalden (1670–1736) said by 1736 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have never derived the least joy out of amusements. Perhaps that is a sign of the impotence of pleasure. I ran riot and threw myself into wild diversions out of the simple desire to escape from my own shadow.”
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have a two-year-old who just turned three, and my four-year-old just turned five. I have the same irrational feelings taking them to pre-school. It's this charged combination of stress and joy and anxiety and excitement. When they're away, you've got a sudden loss of purpose and this ever-present fear about the kid's welfare. The departure of our children from our nest is not an easy thing.”
Vera Farmiga (born 1973) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in "Q&A: Bates Motel's Vera Farmiga on the Terrors of Parenthood" by Eric Spitznagel at Esquire (February 1, 2014)
“Crewmates, by now we are hardly strangers to evil and hardship. We've suffered worse. God will grant us an end to these sufferings also. ... Take heart once again and dispel your fears and depression. Maybe the day'll come when even this will be joy to remember.”
Frederick Ahl (1941–2025) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Translation of Virgil's Aeneid (2007), Book I, lines 198–199 and 202–203
“It was strange, I reflected, as we went out into the golden evening of the Byzantine streets, that even in the weirdest circumstances, the most troubling episodes of one’s life, the greatest divides from home and familiarity, there were these moments of undeniable joy.”
Elizabeth Kostova (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There was a helplessness to his joy, the same kind of helplessness as in that woman’s despair.”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (born 1977) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Marriage can be a source of joy and love and mutual support but why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we don’t teach boys the same? We raise girls to see each other as competitors not for jobs or accomplishments, which I think can be a good thing, but for the attention of men. We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are.”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (born 1977) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Marriage can be a good thing, a source of joy, love, and mutual support. But why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage, but we don’t teach boys to do the same?”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (born 1977) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nothing fills us with deep and lasting joy the way that doing a good turn for someone else does. Saving somebody's life, human or animal, is that “good turn” in spades.”
Victoria Moran (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My travelling companion [= Corot] has just abandoned me. He's a perfect Father Joy, this Father Corot. He is altogether a wonderful man, who mixes jokes in with his very good advice.”
Charles-François Daubigny (1817–1878) first seen 1852 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote about Corot, in his letter of 1852; as cited in Corot, Gary Tinterow, Michael Pantazzi, Vincent Pomarède - Galeries nationales du Grand Palais (France), National Gallery of Canada, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New …
“Nature is like parting a curtain, you go into it. I want to draw a certain response like this.. ..that quality of response from people when they leave themselves behind, often experienced in nature, an experience of simple joy.. .My paintings are about merging, about formlessness.. .A world without objects, without interruption.”
Agnes Martin (1912–2004) first seen 1972 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ann Wilson, from her talks in the Summer of 1972 at Agnes Martin's home in Mexico - an unpublished document; as quoted in Agnes Martin: Her Life and Art, Chapter 7 - 'Departures', Nancy Princenthal; Thames and Hudson, N…
“I know what turns me on, and it's that fine line, that point where you're falling off the edge of a cliff, where your stomach turns, [and] I'm always trying to find that point in music. You rarely hit it, and again, that's the joy of playing live, because there you can be just at that point where you've lost balance. I'm always walking between polarities, trying to find the opposing sides.”
KatieJane Garside (born 1968) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On creative aspirations, Drowned in Sound (2002)
“If I don't get a chance to play with my son in the morning, I feel like I missed something that I'll never get back. It's such a joy to wake up and be in the mindset of a five-year-old before transitioning into the role of "executive.”
Biz Stone (born 1974) first seen 2018 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The co-founder of Twitter plays with his son for an hour every morning—here's why", in CNBC.com (22 May 2018).
“Like I said, the Star Trek fans are the most loyal and lovely there are. It's a pleasure to be able to see their joy and to shake their hands or give them a hug of gratitude for their support.”
Cyia Batten (born 1972) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Enterprise's Orion Slave Girls (March 16, 2016)
“And for yourself, may the gods grant you Your heart's desire, a husband and a home, And the blessing of a harmonious life. For nothing is greater or finer than this, When a man and woman live together With one heart and mind, bringing joy To their friends and grief to their foes.”
Stanley Lombardo (born 1943) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Amalek is still alive today … Every time you experience a worry or doubt about how God is running the world – that's Amalek launching an attack against your soul. We must wipe Amalek out of our hearts whenever – and wherever – he attacks so that we can serve God with complete joy.”
Baal Shem Tov (1698–1760) said by 1760 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in "The Song That Transformed Amalek" by Libi Astaire (25 December 2007).
“A thin and sickly kid, I was pushed around and beaten up by bullies throughout my childhood, until I grew bigger than everybody and it stopped, I knew very well how they operate, and specifically the joy they take in scaring people. I’d stared them in the face so often that it wasn’t particularly challenging to do an impression.”
Thomas F. Wilson (born 1959) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Back to the Future's' Thomas Wilson: Biff Was a Reflection of the Bullies Who Tormented Me (October 19, 2015)
“It was fun. It was fun coming to the ballpark and competing with these guys. If we were down, if we were up, it didn’t matter. We were always having fun. It was a joy.”
Aaron Judge (born 1992) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whoever comes to this house shall never leave without being filled with joy. To Me, the Parent, all human beings in the world are My children.”
Nakayama Miki (1798–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source