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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“The nearest friends can go With anyone to death, comes so far short They might as well not try to go at all. No, from the time when one is sick to death, One is alone, and he dies more alone. Friends make pretence of following to the grave, But before one is in it, their minds are turned And making the best of their way back to life And living people, and things they understand.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How good is man's life, the mere living! How fit to employ All the heart and the soul and the senses Forever in joy!”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I cannot be content with less than heaven; Living, and comprehensive of all life. Thee, universal heaven, celestial all; Thee, sacred seat of intellective time; Field of the soul's best wisdom: home of truth, Star-throned.”
Philip James Bailey (1816–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Disobedience without civility, discipline, discrimination, non-violence, is certain destruction. Disobedience combined with love is the living water of life. Civil disobedience is a beautiful variant to signify growth, it is not discordance which spells death.”
Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) first seen 1922 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Young India (1 May 1922)
“These creatures you have seen are animals carven and wrought into new shapes. To that, to the study of the plasticity of living forms, my life has been devoted. I have studied for years, gaining in knowledge as I go. I see you look horrified, and yet I am telling you nothing new. It all lay in the surface of practical anatomy years ago, but no one had the temerity to touch it.”
H. G. Wells (1866–1946) said by 1946 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We crawled up to bed, tumbled down half dressed, and stayed there ten hours. Most of my Saturday nights went like this. On the whole, the two hours when one was perfectly and wildly happy seemed worth the subsequent headache. For many men in the quarter, unmarried and with no future to think of, the weekly drinking-bout was the one thing that made life worth living.”
George Orwell (1903–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It’s not just the one million soldiers on the border who are living on hair-trigger alert. It’s all of us. That’s what nuclear bombs do. Whether they’re used or not, they violate everything that is humane. They alter the meaning of life itself. Why do we tolerate them? Why do we tolerate these men who use nuclear weapons to blackmail the entire human race?”
Arundhati Roy (born 1961) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: War Talk, CounterPunch, (June 2, 2002)
“For his [the artist's] life is, of necessity, full of conflicts, since two forces fight in him: the ordinary man with his justified claim for happiness, contentment, and guarantees for living on the one hand, and the ruthless creative passion on the other, which under certain conditions crushes all personal desires into the dust.”
Carl Jung (1875–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the course of a life devoted less to living than to reading, I have verified many times that literary intentions and theories are nothing more than stimuli and that the final work usually ignores or even contradicts them.”
Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions and, were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions.”
George Santayana (1863–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This living hand, now warm and capable Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold And in the icy silence of the tomb, So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood So in my veins red life might stream again, And thou be conscience-calm'd — see here it is — I hold it towards you.”
John Keats (1795–1821) first seen 1819 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: This living hand" (1819)
“Life wouldn't be worth living if I worried over the future as well as the present. When things are at their worst I find something always happens.”
W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The superiority of the dreamer is that dreaming is much more practical than living, and that the dreamer extracts from life a much vaster and varied pleasure than the action man. In better and more direct words, the dreamer is the real action man.”
Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Through the fortunate effect of my frankness, I had the rarest and surest opportunity to know a man well, which is to study him at leisure in his private life and living, so to speak, with himself. For he share himself without reservation and made me feel as much at home in his house as in mine. I had almost no other abode than his own.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) said by 1778 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“{of Theatres} There, while weeping for sorrows which are not, laughing at the light jest or the ludicrous misadventure, how little is remembered of the want which makes fear the only bond that binds the living to life !”
Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) said by 1838 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Weep not for the dead with a fruitless recalling, Their soul on the wings of the morning hath fled; Mourn rather for those whom yet life is enthralling, Ah! weep for the living—weep not for the dead.”
Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) said by 1838 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He said it was fearful to see them stand, Nor the living nor yet the dead, And the light glared strange in the glassy eyes Whose human look was fled. For frost had done one half life's part, And kept them from decay ; Those they loved had mouldered, but these Look'd the dead of yesterday.”
Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) first seen 1826 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Frozen Ship, from The London Literary Gazette, (16th September 1826) - Metrical Fragment No. V. - The Frozen Ship, under the pen name 'Iole'
“Weep for life, with its toil and care, Its crime to shun, and its sorrow to bear ; Let tears and the sign of tears be shed Over the living, not over the dead !”
Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) first seen 1830 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (21st August 1830) The Legacy of the Roses
“This art that we are all working in, we feel it has a long future before it, and one must have some settled base, like steady people, and not like decadents. Here my life will become more and more like a Japanese painter's, living close to nature like a petty tradesman.”
Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) first seen 1888 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Theo, Autumn 1888; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935, (letter 540), pp. 22-23
“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)
“If you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up. Moreover, nothing then would be immoral, everything would be lawful, even cannibalism.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Faith is the best wealth for a man in this world. Righteousness when well practised brings happiness. Truth is the sweetest of flavours. They say the life of one living by wisdom is the best.”
Gautama Buddha (501–501 BC) said by 501 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life is so fluid that one can only hope to capture the living moment, to capture it alive and fresh ... without destroying that moment.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in D. H. Lawrence and Nine Women Writers (1996) by Leo Hamalian, p. 93
“My life is slowed up by thought and the need to understand what I am living.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: February, 1932
“It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death. (1 April 1939)”
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living: All things fall under this name. The Sun itself is but the dark simulacrum, and the light but the shadow of God.”
Thomas Browne (1605–1682) said by 1682 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All the communions of a life-time are one communion. All the communions of all men now living are one communion. All the communions of all men, present, past and future, are one communion.”
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) said by 1955 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hasn’t all this taught you anything?” Annette asked Gabriel Baines as they waited for the simulacrum's return and report. “Like what?” “That there is no perfect defense. There is no protection. Being alive means being exposed; it’s the nature of life to be hazardous—it’s the stuff of living.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You think life is worth living, Dar?” Hadley demanded suddenly. “Who knows. And if you have to ask, there’s something wrong with you.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have made my choice, Hori. I will share my life with you for good or evil, until death comes..." With his arms round her, with the sudden new sweetness of his face against hers, she was filled with an exultant richness of living.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To be part of something one doesn't in the least understand is, I think, one of the most intriguing things about life. I like living. I have sometimes been wildly despairing, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“O mighty and once living instrument of formative nature. Incapable of availing thyself of thy vast strength thou hast to abandon a life of stillness and to obey the law which God and time gave to procreative nature.”
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) said by 1519 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One of the benefits of being a writer, I think, is that if what you're doing for a living is examining your life, hopefully by the time you reach this advanced age, you understand something about yourself and why you think what you think. Of course, other writers go in different directions.”
Salman Rushdie (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We admitted that everything living is born of the dead. For if the soul existed before birth, and in coming to life and being born can be born only from death and dying, must she not after death continue to exist, since she has to be born again?”
Socrates (470–399 BC) said by 399 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Deeds rather than words express my concept of the part religion should play in everyday life. I have watched constantly that in our movie work the highest moral and spiritual standards are upheld, whether it deals with fable or with stories of living action.”
Walt Disney (1901–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“At times it seems to me that I am living my life backwards, and that at the approach of old age my real youth will begin. My soul was born covered with wrinkles—wrinkles my ancestors and parents most assiduously put there and that I had the greatest trouble removing.”
André Gide (1869–1951) said by 1951 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The best way to waste your life is by taking notes. The easiest way to avoid living is to just watch.”
Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it, from the moral point of view.”
William James (1842–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Oh, many say that I'm too young To let you know just where I come from. Oh, but you will see that it's just a matter of time My love will surely make you mine.Ooh, living in a world of ghetto life, Everyone around seems so uptight. Nothing's wrong. It's alright with my man, my man.”
Curtis Mayfield (1942–1999) first seen 1976 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Something He Can Feel, performed by Aretha Franklin, from Sparkle (1976).
“Is life worth living? Yes, so long As Spring revives the year, And hails us with the cuckoo's song, To show that she is here;”
Alfred Austin (1835–1913) said by 1913 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Is life worth living? Yes, so long As there is wrong to right, Wail of the weak against the strong, Or tyranny to fight;”
Alfred Austin (1835–1913) said by 1913 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He is dead already who doth not feel Life is worth living still.”
Alfred Austin (1835–1913) said by 1913 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The riot, then, was an exercise in science and theology—a seeking after clues by the living as to what life was all about.”
Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The only person who wants real fairness is whoever has the worst life on earth, because he has nothing of his own to share in return. I don't know who that person is, but I have a mental image of a naked guy with no arms and legs, living in a rented poison ivy patch and being forced to read this book.”
Scott Adams (1957–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hopes rise and dreams flicker and die. Love plans for tomorrow and loneliness thinks of yesterday. Life is beautiful and living is pain. The sound of music floats down a dark street.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) first seen 1956 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Gerald "Ching" Tyrrell, (11 November 1956), p. 28
“Have the courage to say no. Have the courage to face the truth. Do the right thing because it is right. These are the magic keys to living your life with integrity.”
W. Clement Stone (1902–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Teen Ink : What Matters (2003) by Stephanie H. Meyer, John Meyer, and Peggy Veljkovic, p. 309
“The great question is not, who died right, but who lived right? There is infinitely more responsibility in living than in dying. The moment of death is the most unimportant moment of life. Nothing can be done then. You cannot even do a favor for a friend, except to remember him in your will.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) said by 1899 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'm the same as a key piece of machinery in a steel mill, which is needed to make steel and to make money for the mill owners. If I break down, it's their problem. My problem is to build some kind of decent life for myself in this crazy unreal world in which I make my living.”
Elizabeth Taylor (1932–2011) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in "The Frail Goddess," The Real and the Unreal (1961) by Bill Davidson, p. 78
“For most creatures, being parasitized is a way of life—if you call that living.”
Annie Dillard (1945–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think “taste” is a social concept and not an artistic one. I’m willing to show good taste, if I can, in somebody else’s living room, but our reading life is too short for a writer to be in any way polite. Since his words enter into another’s brain in silence and intimacy, he should be as honest and explicit as we are with ourselves.”
John Updike (1932–2009) first seen 1977 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview in New York Times Book Review (April 10, 1977). later published in Conversations with John Updike (1994) edited by James Plath, p. 113