Quotes to inspire and reflect

Asia is rising against me

America when will you be angelic?

“Is it weakness of intellect, birdie?” I cried,

[ The punishment of a billiard sharp :]

I have a left shoulder-blade that is a miracle of loveliness. People come miles to see it. My right elbow has a fascination that few can resist. It is on view Tuesdays and Fridays, on presentation of visiting card.

And make each prisoner pent

To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock,

[ Yum-Yum :] Everything is a source of fun.

Three little maids who, all unwary,

Behold the Lord High Executioner!

And that singular anomaly, the lady novelist—

When the enterprising burglar isn’t burgling, When the cut-throat isn’t occupied in crime.

My family pride is something inconceivable. I can’t help it. I was born sneering.

Our feelings we with difficulty smother

When a felon’s not engaged in his employment

I’m very well acquainted too with matters mathematical,

When the foeman bares his steel Tarantara! tarantara!

You shall quickly be parsonified,

I am the very model of a modern Major-General,

Poor wandering one!

Here’s a first-rate opportunity

He is an Englishman!

Things are seldom what they seem,

When I was a lad I served a term

Bad language or abuse,

And I think it only right

To return the compliment.

Then give three cheers, and one cheer more,

[ Captain :] I do my best to satisfy you all—

[ Captain :] I am the Captain of the Pinafore ;

[ Captain :] And I’m never, never sick at sea!

Croyez ceux qui cherchent la vérité, doutez de ceux qui la trouvent .

[ In response to being asked who was the greatest nineteenth-century poet :] Hugo,—hélas!

Families, I hate you! Shut-in homes, closed doors, jealous possessions of happiness.

Everything has been said before; but since nobody listens, we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.

If you could hear the whispering of the dream you would hear no other sound.

[ Remark to reporters after his grandson had been kidnapped and a ransom payment was demanded, Guildford, England, 26 July 1973 :] I have 14 other grandchildren and if I pay one penny now, I’ll have 14 other kidnapped grandchildren.

I know you lawyers can, with ease,

Life is a jest; and all things show it.

A miss for pleasure, and a wife for breed.

Toute passe.—L’art robuste

I confess indeed that the Fermat theorem as an isolated proposition has little interest for me, since a multitude of such propositions, which one can neither prove nor refute, can be easily promulgated.

640K ought to be enough for anyone.

I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation.

People often overestimate what will happen in the next two years and underestimate what will happen in ten.

Over the weekend the vultures got into the presidential palace by pecking through the screens on the balcony windows and the flapping of their wings stirred up the stagnant time inside, and at dawn on Monday the city awoke out of its lethargy of centuries with the warm, soft breeze of a great man dead and rotting grandeur.

Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; but urge me not to use moderation in a case like the present.

At that time Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point.