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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“I work a lot but don't seem to finish. That is, I hope what I am doing means something because I don't know what I am doing. It's strange and terrible but I feel calm. Today I worked non-stop for six hours on a sculpture and I don't know what the result is.. .Planes upon planes, sections of muscles, of a face and then? And the total effect? Does what I create live? Where will I end up?”
Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) first seen 1912 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Boccioni's quote, from an undated letter to Gino Severini (probably July or August 1912, or November); as quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008.
“One cannot become a saint when one works sixteen hours a day.”
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am reminded of the professor who, in his declining hours, was asked by his devoted pupils for his final counsel. He replied, "Verify your quotations.”
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Second World War, Volume IV: The Hinge of Fate (1951)
“I think crime pays. The hours are good, you meet a lot of interesting people, you travel a lot.”
Woody Allen (born 1935) first seen 1969 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Take the Money and Run (1969).
“And when his hours are numbered, and the world Is all his own, retiring, as he were not, Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work, The frolic architecture of the snow.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In different hours, a man represents each of several of his ancestors, as if there were seven or eight of us rolled up in each man's skin, — seven or eight ancestors at least, — and they constitute the variety of notes for that new piece of music which his life is.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Long hours of labour seem to be the secret of the rational and healthful processes, which are to raise the condition of the labourer by an improvement of his mental and moral powers and to make a rational consumer out of him.”
Karl Marx (1818–1883) said by 1883 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It would be worth the while to look closely into the eye which has been open and seeing at such hours, and in such solitudes, its dull, yellowish, greenish eye. Methinks my own soul must be a bright invisible green.”
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) said by 1862 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours ... In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.”
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) said by 1862 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Unwind my riddle. Cruel as hawks the hours fly; Wounded men seldom come home to die; The hard waves see an arm flung high; Scorn hits strong because of a lie; Yet there exists a mystic tie. Unwind my riddle.”
Stephen Crane (1871–1900) first seen 1899 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Epigraph of "The Clan of No Name" (1899); published in the anthology Wounds in the Rain (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co, 1900) p. 42
“Resolve to spend a certain number of hours every day amongst your books.”
Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) first seen 1763 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to James Boswell (8 Dec 1763)
“Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration.”
Donald Knuth (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The ground was trembling under their feet, and they clung to the resolutions made in their calmer hours so as not to sink into the abyss.”
Émile Zola (1840–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ch. 9 (tr. Jean Stewart, 1955)
“Of all the books I have ever worked on, I think Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare gave me the most pleasure, day in, day out. For months and months I lived and thought Shakespeare, and I don't see how there can be any greater pleasure in the world—any pleasure, that is, that one can indulge in for as much as ten hours without pause, day after day indefinitely.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In Joy Still Felt (1980), pp. 464–465
“I should have been home Hours ago, But I'm not here. But I'm not here...”
Kate Bush (born 1958) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“O Love! what hours were thine and mine, In lands of palm and southern pine; In lands of palm, of orange-blossom, Of olive, aloe, and maize and vine!”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Daisy, Stanza 1; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Also quoted by: Alfred Tennyson
“The winter wind is loud and wild, Come close to me, my darling child; Forsake thy books, and mateless play; And, while the night is gathering grey, We'll talk its pensive hours away;—”
Emily Brontë (1818–1848) first seen 1846 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Faith and Despondency", st. 1 (1846)
“So much of our profession is taken up with pretending ... that an actor must spend at least half his waking hours in fantasy.”
Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) first seen 1965 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Where's the Rest of Me? (1965)
“All the Apollo people were working hard, working long hours, and were dedicated to making certain everything they did, they were doing to the very best of their ability.”
Neil Armstrong (1930–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Who ne'er his bread in sorrow ate, Who ne'er the mournful midnight hours Weeping upon his bed has sate, He knows you not, ye Heavenly Powers.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: Henry W. Longfellow
“Authors have a greater right than any copyright, though it is generally unacknowledged or disregarded. They have a right to the reader's civility. There are favorable hours for reading a book, as for writing it, and to these the author has a claim. Yet many people think that when they buy a book they buy with it the right to abuse the author.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Green grow the rashes, O; Green grow the rashes, O; The sweetest hours that e'er I spend, Are spent amang the lasses, O.”
Robert Burns (1759–1796) first seen 1787 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Green Grow the Rashes, O, st. 1 (1787)
“Green grow the rashes, O; Green grow the rashes, O; The sweetest hours that e'er I spend Are spent among the lasses, O.”
Robert Burns (1759–1796) first seen 1787 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Green Grow the Rashes, O, chorus (1787)
“Some wee short hours ayont the twal.”
Robert Burns (1759–1796) first seen 1787 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Death and Dr. Hornbook, st. 31 (1787)
“The golden Hours on angel wings Flew o'er me and my Dearie; For dear to me as light and life Was my sweet Highland Mary.”
Robert Burns (1759–1796) first seen 1792 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Highland Mary, st. 2 (1792)
“[I am] fast becoming a patriot of the most decided stamp. Scornfully as I used to speak and think of Scotland in my hours of bitterness and irritation, I never fail to stand up manfully in defence of it thro' thick and thin, whenever a renegade Scot takes upon him to abuse it.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) first seen 1824 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Thomas Murray (24 August 1824), quoted in Fred Kaplan, Thomas Carlyle: A Biography (1983), p. 100
“No nobler feeling than this of admiration for one higher than himself dwells in the breast of man. It is to this hour, and at all hours, the vivifying influence in man's life.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'Tis greatly wise to talk with our past hours, And ask them what report they bore to heaven.”
Edward Young (1683–1765) said by 1765 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Date not the life which thou hast run by the mean of reckoning of the hours and days, which though hast breathed: a life spent worthily should be measured by a nobler line, — by deeds, not years...”
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816) first seen 1799 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Pizarro (first acted 24 May 1799), Act iv, Scene 1. Compare: "Who well lives, long lives; for this age of ours / Should not be numbered by years, daies, and hours", Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas, Second Week, Fourth D…
“Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are there in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask — half our great theological and metaphysical problems — are like that.”
C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The hours of folly are measur'd by the clock, but of wisdom no clock can measure.”
William Blake (1757–1827) said by 1827 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I would say that in order to reach the people you must feel as if you are part of the people. You must know what the people want, what they need, and what they feel. You must do a little self-analysis, study the university's statistics, and ask how many workers, how many peasants, how many men who make their living by their sweat eight hours a day are here in this university.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“While a person dies every day during the eight or more hours in which he or she functions as a commodity, individuals come to life afterward in their spiritual creations. But this remedy bears the germs of the same sickness: that of a solitary being seeking harmony with the world.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Each man carries within himself his own dose of natural opium, incessantly secreted and renewed, and, from birth to death, how many hours can we count filled with pleasure, with prosperous and effective action?”
Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) said by 1867 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So let me be thy choir, and make a moan Upon the midnight hours”
John Keats (1795–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's so wonderful to shut out the world for a few hours. Rest, peace, silence, solitude. You would think they were luxuries that only the very rich can afford, and yet they cost nothing. Strange that they should be so hard to come by.”
W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I can't remember ever feeling so glad that a movie was finally over. [Director George] Lucas may have held my imagination hostage for two hours, but reclaiming it afterward wasn't hard at all.”
Stephanie Zacharek (born 1963) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002)
“However intimate we may be with the operations of the mind, we cannot think more than two or three minutes a day; — unless, by taste or by profession, we practice, for hours on end, brutalizing words in order to extract ideas from them. The intellectual represents the major disgrace, the culminating failure of Homo sapiens.”
Emil Cioran (1911–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If we could sleep twenty-four hours a day, we would soon return to the primordial slime, the beatitude of that perfect torpor before Genesis-the dream of every consciousness sick of itself.”
Emil Cioran (1911–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I do nothing, granted. But I see the hours pass — which is better than trying to fill them.”
Emil Cioran (1911–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Love reckons hours for months, and days for years; And every little absence is an age.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You season still with sports your serious hours, For age but tastes of pleasures, youth devours.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Why does Antony dream out his hours, And tempts not fortune for a noble day?”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sorceries to raise th’ infernal pow’rs, And sigils framed in planetary hours.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'Tis soothing, oh ! most soothing to the heart, To rove 'mid scenes where once we have been blest! Each tree, each blossom, has a thrilling charm; They seem memorials of those happier hours : The very sigh that tells they are no more, Is sweet unto the spirit; former days, And former feelings, rise upon the soul, Dear as they once have been.”
Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) said by 1838 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Oh, softest is the cheek's love-ray When seen by moonlight hours Other roses seek the day, But blushes are night flowers.”
Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) first seen 1821 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: When Should Lover’s Breathe Their Vows from The London Literary Gazette (24th November 1821)
“'Tis May again, another May, Looking as if it meant to stay ; So many are its thousand flowers, So glorious are its sunny hours, So green its earth, so blue its sky, As made for Hope's eternity.”
Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) said by 1838 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“O beauty of the midnight skies! O mystery of each distant star ! O dreaming hours, whose magic lies In rest and calm, with Day afar! Thanks for the higher moods that wake Our thoughtful and immortal part !— Out on our life, could we not make A spiritual temple of the heart ?”
Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) said by 1838 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Many a head that down had lain, Impatient with its twelve hours' pain, And wishing that the bed it prest, Were, as the grave's, a long last rest, Has sprung again at morning's call, Forgiving, or forgetting all; Lighting the weary weight of thought With colours from the day-break brought, Reading new promise in the sky, And hearing Hope, the lark on high.”
Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) said by 1838 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source