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 somehow always have this idea that as soon as I can get through this work that’s piled up ahead of me, I’ll really write a beautiful thing. But I never do. I always have the idea that someday, somehow, I’ll be living a beautiful life.”
Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Written in the 1920s, as quoted in The Ghost in the Little House, ch. 8, by William V. Holtz (1993).
“I put everything I had into it — all my feelings and everything I'd learned in 46 years of living, about family life and fathers and children. And my feelings about racial justice and inequality and opportunity.”
Gregory Peck (1916–2003) first seen 1989 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On his role as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, in a 1989 CNN interview, quoted in "Oscar-winner Gregory Peck dies at age 87" in USA Today (12 June 2003)
“It is a very fine line between life and death. I realize I am walking this line. Living in New York City and also flying on airplanes so much, I face the possibility of death every day. And when I die there is nobody to take my place… That is true of a lot of people (or everyone) because everyone is an individual and everyone is important in that they cannot be replaced.”
Keith Haring (1958–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Keith Haring Journals (1996)
“They darted down and rose up like a wave Or buzzed impetuously as before; One would have thought the corpse was held a slave To living by the life it bore!”
Allen Tate (1899–1979) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Carrion", from Poems (1961)
“Think on the shame of dreams for deeds, The scandal of unnatural strife, The slur upon immortal needs, The treason done to life:Arise! no more a living lie, And with me quicken and control Some memory that shall magnify The universal Soul.”
William Ernest Henley (1849–1903) said by 1903 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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
“Back in my 20s, I was playing poker to avoid living. I wasn’t very satisfied with life. I used to play in a big game in Archway. And we’d play as much as we possibly could and for as much money as we had, and that went on for a couple of years.”
Patrick Marber (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Simon Peter said to Him, "Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of Life." Jesus said, "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven." (114)”
Jesus (6 BC–33) said by 33 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So is the song of life being sung/ By us and by all the living beings/ A melodious and harmonious song,/ Where the singer loses her own self/ And absorbs in the wonderful harmony of the song!/ An almost ecstatic experience.”
Kuruvilla Pandikattu (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What we find in our heroes and martyrs is a living witness to the fact that the true life of faith can only be nobly inspired and rightly lived if one takes it on bravely and gallantly, as something of a grand adventure in which we set out into an unknown country to face many a danger, to meet many a joy, to find many a comrade, to win and lose many a battle.”
Alan Hirsch (born 1959) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The unconventional and uninhibited way of living was a part of my life. I won't be like that now.”
Diego Maradona (1960–2020) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: EXCLUSIVE: In the lair of Diego!", Mail Online(23 January 2012)
“We can create a fearless life by living daily out of our comfort zone, and in the deliciousness of uncertainty.”
Leo Babauta (born 1973) first seen 2022 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From Zen Habits, 22 July 2022
“All life, every living thing is a word for God in His mystery.”
Michael Elmore-Meegan (born 1959) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Living in a bittersweet state, with an intense awareness of life's fragility and the pain of separation, is an underappreciated strength and an unexpected path to wisdom, joy, and especially communion.”
Susan Cain (born 1968) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I believe there is no more creative medium than photography to recreate the living world of our time. Photography gladly accepts the challenge because it is at home in its element: namely, realism—real life—the now.”
Berenice Abbott (1898–1991) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Photography at the Crossroads," 1951.
“People have also said that I can't be used as a fair example of Hollywood living since I keep my private life so completely separate from my career.”
Irene Dunne (1898–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The competitive struggle forces men and women to spend an excessive amount of time in the kitchen of life and thereby denies them maximum opportunity of appropriating the values of library, conservatory, chapel and living room.”
Kirby Page (1890–1957) said by 1957 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“St. Paul earned his living most of the time by hard labor and constantly reminded his converts that they must not defraud each other, but love one another and work with their own hands. The same rule of life is applied by the laws governing the early monastic orders.”
Robert Hunter (author) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Managers who don't know how to measure what they want settle for wanting what they can measure. For example, those who want a high quality of work life but don't know how to measure it, often settle for wanting a high standard of living because they can measure it.”
Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) said by 2009 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 4, bold text cited in: Colin J. Neill, Phillip A. Laplante, Joanna F. DeFranco (2011) Antipatterns: Managing Software Organizations and People.
“The true colour of life is the colour of the body, the colour of the covered red, the implicit and not explicit red of the living heart and the pulses. It is the modest colour of the unpublished blood.”
Alice Meynell (1847–1922) said by 1922 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don't want to know what's good, or bad, or true. I let God worry about the truth. I just want to know the momentary fact about things. Life isn't good, or bad, or true. It's merely factual, it's sensual, it's alive. My idea of living sensual facts are you, a home, a country, a world, a universe. In that order. I want to know what I am, not what I should be.”
Paddy Chayefsky (1923–1981) said by 1981 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have come to the conclusion that a work of art restricted to what the artist has put in it is only a part of itself. It only attains full stature with what people and time make of it. It involves the whole complex of human relation to life. It is a mode of thinking, acting, perceiving and living.”
Naum Gabo (1890–1977) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote, 1937; in Gabo's letter to Herbert Read; cited in: Cyril Connolly (1944) Horizon: a review of literature and art. Vol 9-10. p. 58
“It is justified to consider the Nürnberg trials a farce. Guilt was decided in advance, and the justifications for the sentences were absurd. For an example Alber Speer (an architect) got a long sentence since he knew about the holocaust but didn't try to prevent it. As if a person living in a dictatorship should fight against the dictatorship even if it costs his life.”
Jussi Halla-aho (born 1971) first seen 2010 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Jussi Halla-aho (2010), on Hommaforum, November 16, 2010.
“How great is the difference between The hidden child and the secret friend! For the friend makes only loving, Living but measured ascents toward God. But the child presses on to lose its own life upon the summits, in that simplicity which knoweth not itself.”
John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) said by 1381 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Evelyn Underhill Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man's Spiritual Consciousness (1912), p. 433
“My own mystic bent leads me to believe that musical variations, collage, reiteration and process, or evolution, are beautiful. Life is worth living and beauty is worth making.”
Beth Anderson (born 1950) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Beth Anderson at allmusic.com, 2013
“Life is simply the reification of the process of living.”
Ernst Mayr (1904–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Attributed to Ernst Mayr in: artin John Ingrouille, Bill Eddie (2006) Plants. p. 400
“In the 1970s I was amazed to be talked about as a '60s sex symbol. I wasn't that person, as if I were a doll from the past. I had to learn to come to terms with that. It's funny, it's silly, the ridiculousness of having asked so much of celebrity. Then it becomes really interesting and very much part of the excitement of the life you’re living now, knowing you’re approaching the end of it.”
Julie Christie (born 1940) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Alan Riding "A Role About Winter for Julie Christie, a Star in Eternal Spring]", The New York Times (18 April 2007)
“All this long human story, most passionate and tragic in the living, was but an unimportant, a seemingly barren and negligible effort, lasting only for a few moments in the life of the galaxy.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In a vibrant and emergent culture, rather than having conflicts between nations, the challenges we will face will be overcoming scarcity, restructuring damaged environments, creating innovative technologies, increasing agricultural yield, improving communications, building communications between nations, sharing technologies, and living a meaningful life.”
Jacque Fresco (1916–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If money is all that a man makes, then he will be poor — poor in happiness, poor in all that makes life worth living.”
Herbert N. Casson (1869–1951) first seen 1950 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Herbert N. Casson cited in: Forbes magazine (1950) The Forbes scrapbook of Thoughts on the business of life. p. 302
“Norman Borlaug is the living embodiment of the human quest for a hunger free world. His life is his message.”
M. S. Swaminathan (1925–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The joy of life is living it, or so it seems to me; In finding shackles on your wrists, then struggling till you're free; In seeing wrongs and righting them, in dreaming splendid dreams, Then toiling till the vision is as real as moving streams. The happiest mortal on the earth is he who ends his day By leaving better than he found to bloom along the way.”
Edgar Guest (1881–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You're pretty low down," says I to him, "But nobody's holding you there, my friend. Life is a stream where men sink or swim, And the drifters come to a sorry end; But there's two of you living and breathing still — The fellow you are, and he's tough to see, And another chap, if you've got the will, The man that you still have a chance to be.”
Edgar Guest (1881–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Cézanne showed us forms living in the reality of light; Picasso gives us a material report of their real life in the mind. He establishes a free, mobile perspective, in such a way that the shrewd mathematician Maurice Princet has deduced an entire geometry.”
Jean Metzinger (1883–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Aristotle once said that the unexamined life is not worth living. I think it's time to examine what we do once more in the spirit of a critical friend. Let's pause for a moment to consider what we need to examine.”
Indra Nooyi (born 1955) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“…Inner peace is important, but I have always felt that living a daily life with peace is the end. So in reality individual peace and global peace are not separate. They are one and the same.”
Ela Bhatt (1933–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The probity in a public life is a must for improvement of country’s economy vis-à-vis the living conditions of common man. To mould the perceptions of students he wrote biographies of three great men.”
D. V. Gundappa (1887–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[Jorge Luis] "I am a man like other men who love and suffer. Do I love Ángel? Yes, I love him. Do I suffer because of it? Yes. I suffer because my love for him must remain a secret and our life together enshrouded in lies." He swigged the pulque. "Can you imagine living in a world where there is no place in the sun for you, Miguel? Only a few rat holes like this one.”
Michael Nava (born 1954) first seen 1911 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p.186 [speaking as at 1911]
“Anyone could see that this woman is living a nightmare. Except that she goes through her daily life wide awake, knowing that she could make a mistake at any moment.”
“I was on the boat, at sea, not expecting anything (I was of course busy with the inner life, but I was living physically on the boat), when all of a sudden, abruptly, about two nautical miles from Pondicherry, the quality, I may even say physical quality, of the atmosphere of the air, changed so much that I knew we were entering the aura of Sri Aurobindo. It was a physical experience.”
Mirra Alfassa (1878–1973) first seen 1916 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On her return to Pondicherry in April 1920 accompanied by an English lady, Miss Dorothy Hodgeson, after she had refused an offer by Rabindranath Tagore to take charge of Shantiniketan, his educational institute, quoted …
“There's always been an emotion in my voice because it reached back to the life I was living. Where there were tears on stage, it wasn't Hollywood, it was real.”
Tina Turner (1939–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Originally presented in The "Unknown" Reality, the counterpart idea holds that each of us is neurologically and psychically connected to others who are living in roughly the same given time period and exploring related areas of interest of life-themes; counterparts spring, as it were, from the same entity, or source-self, thus gaining experience from many simultaneous viewpoints.”
Susan M. Watkins (born 1945) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I enjoy laughter and good living and believe life is like a very short visit to a toyshop between birth and death.”
Desmond Morris (1928–2026) first seen 1991 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Sunday Express (November 3, 1991). Cited in Angela Partington (ed.) The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 4th ed. (BCA, 1992) p. 485
“We, as licensed protectors of the species and members in good standing of the master-class of the race, by the power invested in us by those who wish to survive and reproduce, vow to enforce the fiction that life is worth having and worth living come hell or irreparable brain damage.”
Thomas Ligotti (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The idea that we were designed by our past was the principal insight of Charles Darwin. He was the first to realize that you can abandon divine creation of species without abandoning the argument from design. Every living thing is “designed” quite unconsciously by the selective reproduction of its own ancestors to suit a particular life-style.”
Matt Ridley (born 1958) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Are you truly living life or just paying bills until you die?”
“Characters have a way of taking on a life on their own, expressing themselves in the simple philosophy of their times, and expressing beliefs acquired through living, working, and being. Once characters are established, they become their own persons and the ideas of the characters are such ideas as they might have acquired in the circumstances of their daily existence.”
Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) first seen 1988 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Preface, in A Trail of Memories : The Quotations Of Louis L'Amour (1988) by Angelique L'Amour
“However the study of the constituent parts of man, his spirit, soul, and body, reveals man's innate capacity to overcome the disintegrating effects of error thinking and living, and his ability, by conforming to the standards laid down by Jesus, to destroy the seeds of death and implant health and eternal life in his body.”
Charles Fillmore (1854–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The twentieth-century conservative is concerned, first of all, for the regeneration of the spirit and character – with the perennial problem of the inner order of the soul, the restoration of the ethical understanding, and the religious sanction upon which any life worth living is founded. This is conservatism at its highest.”
Russell Kirk (1918–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Twentieth-century paleontologists have fallen into the bad habit of reconstructing the dinosaurs' life functions by using crocodiles as a living model. But the earliest researchers of the nineteenth century proved beyond a doubt that the dinosaurs' powerful hind limbs must have operated like the limbs of gigantic birds.”
Robert T. Bakker (born 1945) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Dinosaur Heresies: A Revolutionary View of Dinosaurs (1986), Longman Scientific & Technical, p. 20