Over 40,000 Famous Quotes Sorted By Topic and Author

When I give a lecture, I accept that people look at their watches, but what I do not tolerate is when they look at it and raise it to their ear to find out if it stopped.

Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.

The essay is a literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything.

One learns little more about a man from his feats of literary memory than from the feats of his alimentary canal.

If you look at history you'll find that no state has been so plagued by its rulers as when power has fallen into the hands of some dabbler in philosophy or literary addict.

They castrate the books of other men in order that with the fat of their works they may lard their own lean volumes.

A poet in history is divine, but a poet in the next room is a joke.

Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation.

A schoolmaster should have an atmosphere of awe, and walk wonderingly, as if he was amazed at being himself.

There is no real teacher who in practice does not believe in the existence of the soul, or in a magic that acts on it through speech.

Arrogance, pedantry, and dogmatism... the occupational diseases of those who spend their lives directing the intellects of the young.

Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater.

If someone had told me I would be Pope one day, I would have studied harder.

A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

This book fills a much-needed gap.

From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.

The great Creator to revereMust sure become the creature;But still the preaching cant forbear,And ev'n the rigid feature:Yet ne'er with wits profane to rangeBe complaisance extended;An atheist laugh's a poor exchangeFor deity offended. - Epistle to a Young Friend, An.

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,And breathed in the face of the foe as he pass'd;And the eyes of the sleepers wax'd deadly and chill,And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still! - Destruction of Sennacherib, The.

The dancing pair that simply sought renown,By holding out to tire each other down;The swain mistrustless of his smutted face,While secret laughter titter'd round the place;The bashful virgin's side-long looks of love,The matrons glance that would those looks reprove:These were thy charms, sweet village; sports like these,With sweet succession, taught e'en toil to please;These were thy bowers their cheerful influence shed,These were thy charms -- but all these charms are fled. - Deserted Village, The.

I am grieved that it should be said he is my brother, and take these courses. Well, as he brews, so shall he drink, for George again. Yet he shall hear on't, and tightly, too, an' I live, i'faith. - Every Man In His Humor.