Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,161,747 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
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“For simple light is perhaps still more beautiful than colors.”
Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) said by 1824 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All clear and transparent words appear to be beautiful sounds. Yes and no are not precisely clear words, but definite words. In clear words, there is more light than movement or attitude.”
Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) said by 1824 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All gardeners live in beautiful places because they make them so.”
Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) said by 1824 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Chastity enables the soul to breathe a pure air in the foulest places; continence makes her strong, no matter in what condition the body may be; her sway over the senses makes her queenly; her light and peace render her beautiful.”
Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) said by 1824 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Fully to understand a grand and beautiful thought requires, perhaps, as much time as to conceive it.”
Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) said by 1824 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They might have occurred if either General Dreedle or General Peckem had once evinced an interest in taking part in orgies with him, but neither ever did, and the colonel was certainly not going to waste his time and energy making love to beautiful women unless there was something in it for him.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Comedy is a weird but very beautiful thing. Even though it seems foolish and silly and crazy, comedy has the most to say about the human condition. Because if you can laugh, you can get by. You can survive when things are bad when you have a sense of humor.”
Mel Brooks (born 1926) first seen 2021 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: All About Me! My Remarkable Life in Show Business (2021) , p. 451
“I saw every performance Nijinsky danced in New York, and I see every baseball game I can get to. You watch a good second baseman digging for a badly thrown ball without letting his foot leave base and it's the same beautiful impossibility as a good pas de deux in Swan Lake.”
Rex Stout (1886–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Penang is a paradise, and east coast Kelantan has beautiful Malay women who walk proudly ahead of their husbands and scorn Koranic purdah....”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Imagine the universe beautiful and just and perfect. Then be sure of one thing: The Is has imagined it quite a bit better than you have.”
Richard Bach (born 1936) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Close your eyes and listen. Listen to the silent screams of terrified mothers, the prayers of anguished old men and women. Listen to the tears of children. Jewish children, a beautiful little girl among them, with golden hair, whose vulnerable tenderness has never left me. Look and listen as they walk towards dark flames so gigantic that the planet itself seemed in danger.”
Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) first seen 1995 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From an address given at Auschwitz in occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Holocaust (January 27, 1995)
“What is abnormal is that I am normal. That I survived the Holocaust and went on to love beautiful girls, to talk, to write, to have toast and tea and live my life — that is what is abnormal.”
Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) first seen 2000 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: After being asked "What does it take to be normal again, after having your humanity stripped away by the Nazis?" in an interview in O : The Oprah Magazine (November 2000)
“A beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn.”
Claude Debussy (1862–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On Richard Wagner as quoted in TIME (7 December 1953)
“People don't very much like things that are beautiful — they are so far from their nasty little minds.”
Claude Debussy (1862–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Debussy : Musician of France (1957) by Victor Illyitch Seroff, p. 172
“Music is a mysterious mathematical process whose elements are part of Infinity. … There is nothing more musical than a sunset. He who feels what he sees will find no more beautiful example of development in all that book which, alas, musicians read but too little — the book of Nature.”
Claude Debussy (1862–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music (1996) by Don Michael Randel
“Art is the most beautiful deception of all! And although people try to incorporate the everyday events of life in it, we must hope that it will remain a deception lest it become a utilitarian thing, sad as a factory. … Let us not disillusion anyone by bringing too much reality into the dream.”
Claude Debussy (1862–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is absolutely beautiful, isn't it? And its a sort of over two years before any of the other recordings she did. That is her singing at the age of 16, and having written those extraordinary lyrics — about whatever they're about.”
David Gilmour (born 1946) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The great tragedy of Science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) first seen 1870 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Presidential Address at the British Association, "Biogenesis and abiogenesis" (1870); later published in Collected Essays, Vol. 8, p. 229
“Europe is only powerful; India is beautiful.”
Savitri Devi (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Hindu Aryas are, among the modern peoples of similar race and language, the only great people to have conserved a living Aryan religion. That is their most beautiful entitlement to glory, the secret of their strength and pride, even in the midst of all their misery the secret of their freedom under all the past and future phases of foreign domination.”
Savitri Devi (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Americans are beautiful -- individually, in communities, and freely joined together by dedication to the United States of America.”
Gerald Ford (1913–2006) first seen 1976 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks at Naturalization Ceremonies at Monticello, Virginia (5 July 1976)
“One of my earliest loves was the Book of Common Prayer. I was seduced by it, by its beautiful words and the sense of history.”
P. D. James (1920–2014) first seen 1993 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Victoria McKee, quoted in Victoria McKee, 'P.D. James', The Times Magazine (22 May 1993), p. 43
“But what is the use of making the world more beautiful if the people who live in it can't love one another?”
P. D. James (1920–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The family only represents one aspect, however important an aspect, of a human being's functions and activities...A life is beautiful and ideal, or the reverse, only when we have taken into our consideration the social as well as the family relationship.”
Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts, because it is no mere translation or abstraction from life; it is life itself.”
Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are very wise and very beautiful; but I never read in either of them, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden.”
Augustine of Hippo (354–430) said by 430 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You are beautiful and you are alone.”
Nico (1938–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think if you’re healthy, aging can be quite a beautiful process, and I think we’ve created an artificial problem for ourselves.”
Joni Mitchell (born 1943) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When you were here before, Couldn't look you in the eye. You're just like an angel, Your skin makes me cry. You float like a feather In a beautiful world. I wish I was special; You're so fuckin' specialBut I'm a creep I'm a weirdo What the hell am I doing here I don't belong here”
Thom Yorke (born 1968) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I saw that everything famous and beautiful in the world, if we judge by the descriptions and drawings of writers and artists, always loses when we go to see it and examine it closely.”
Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) said by 1798 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: History of My Life (trans. Trask 1967), 1997 reprint, vol. 11, chap. 4, p. 112
“I used to envy the father of our race, dwelling as he did in contact with the new-made fields and plants of Eden; but I do so no more, because I have discovered that I also live in "creation's dawn." The morning stars still sing together, and the world, not yet half made, becomes more beautiful every day.”
John Muir (1838–1914) first seen 1873 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Explorations in the Great Tuolumne Cañon", Overland Monthly, volume XI, number 2 (August 1873) pages 139-147 (at page 143); modified and reprinted in John of the Mountains (1938), page 72
“God never made an ugly landscape. All that the sun shines on is beautiful, so long as it is wild.”
John Muir (1838–1914) said by 1914 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.”
John Muir (1838–1914) said by 1914 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The decadent international but individualistic capitalism in the hands of which we found ourselves after the war is not a success. It is not intelligent. It is not beautiful. It is not just. It is not virtuous. And it doesn't deliver the goods. In short we dislike it, and we are beginning to despise it. But when we wonder what to put in its place, we are extremely perplexed.”
John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: National Self-Sufficiency", Finlay Lecture at University College Dublin (19 April 1933), quoted in The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes, Volume 21: Activities, 1931–1939: World Crises and Policies in Britain an…
“Someone who is paying attention can do the same thing that Trump is doing with hate, and do it with love, and become president … That’s kind of beautiful. There’s nothing more optimistic than that. … Donald Trump does, when it comes right down to it, fuck up everything … He fucks up his casinos. He fucks up his buildings.... Maybe he’ll fuck up his campaign before he fucks up the country.”
Penn Jillette (born 1955) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What I am doing is creating ephemera, and I believe that’s not only okay, that’s part of what makes it beautiful. I mean, I am aware it’s likely that in 30 years someone who is deeply interested in magic will dig up recordings of Fool Us and have things to learn, but that’s not what we’re really talking about. That’s excavating a piece of pottery.”
Penn Jillette (born 1955) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I hope that when London is clean passed away and the defeated fields come back again, like an exiled people returning after a war, they may find some beautiful thing to remind them of it all; because we have loved a little that swart old city.”
Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany (1878–1957) said by 1957 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They draw back into themselves, and are thrown back on their own bodies for gratification. The men become narcissistic and uncertain of the power of any woman, no matter how strange and beautiful, to arouse their desire, but the women remain continually receptive to male advances.”
Margaret Mead (1901–1978) said by 1978 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Coming to terms with the rhythms of women's lives means coming to terms with life itself, accepting the imperatives of the body rather than the imperatives of an artificial, man-made, perhaps transcendentally beautiful civilization. Emphasis on the male work-rhythm is an emphasis on infinite possibilities; emphasis on the female rhythms is an emphasis on a defined pattern, on limitation.”
Margaret Mead (1901–1978) said by 1978 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“O this world is beautiful because of you! To love somebody means that we're closer to God.”
Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Old Christmas Songs. I feel something like a longing for a lost homeland. We are giving gifts to each other. A beautiful, old New Testament from Hertha Holk is my greatest joy. I thank her for being my solace and my strength.”
Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What's beautiful is that a creator can be astonished by his own creations.”
David Zindell (born 1952) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is no more beautiful scenery or climate for summer travel than Switzerland presents. The people are industrious and honest, simple and frugal in their habits, and would be very poor with all this, if it were not from the travel through their country. I wish their surplus population would emigrate to the United States.”
Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) said by 1885 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I wonder if you can understand the 'fun' of making a beautiful thing, the pride and satisfaction of it, and the holiness!" The company glanced doubtfully at one another. In Gopher Prairie it is not good form to be holy except at church, between ten-thirty and twelve on Sunday.”
Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951) said by 1951 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life is a beautiful, magnificent thing, even to a jellyfish. … The trouble is you won't fight. You've given up. But there's something just as inevitable as death. And that's life. Think of the power of the universe — turning the Earth, growing the trees. That's the same power within you — if you'll only have the courage and the will to use it.”
Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) first seen 1952 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Calvero's answer to Terry's question: "What is there to fight for?" in Limelight (1952)
“For approximately 500 years [science's] argument for its pre-eminence was that it could create beautiful toys: aircraft, railroads, global economies, television, spacecraft. But that is a fool’s argument for truth! I mean, that’s after all how a medicine show operates, you know: the juggler is so good, the medicine must be even better! This is not an entirely rational way to proceed.”
Terence McKenna (1946–2000) said by 2000 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When you see a woman who can go nowhere without a staff of admirers, it is not so much because they think she is beautiful, it is because she has told them they are handsome.”
Jean Giraudoux (1882–1944) said by 1944 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Man in The Apollo of Bellac: A Play in One Act, p. 12 (1954, as adapted by Maurice Valency).
“Marcia: It's lovely to see you stand so still and so metered, and sing so beautifully. I do believe in you very much Hayley, but I mean, I believe in everyone who has performed tonight. I fought for you, and I will always fight for you no matter what, because I think you're a very beautiful singer.”
Hayley Jensen (born 1983) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mark: Yeah, I mean, I concur. The change in the hair, you really light up the screen Hayley, you just, it's beautiful what you're doing. Um, the choice of song. I would never in a million of years have thought of that song for you and you almost got away with it but the bravery and the choice. Congratulations Hayley. Good on you.”
Hayley Jensen (born 1983) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Marcia: You look great, you're beautiful and this song suits you. You were being yourself and you did great.”
Hayley Jensen (born 1983) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source