c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
I saw to the south a man walking. He was breaking ground in perfect silence. He wore a harness and pulled a plow. His feet trod his figure's blue shadow, and the plow cut a long blue shadow in the field. He turned back as if to check the furrow, or as if he heard a call. Again I saw another man on the plain to the north. This man walked slowly with a spade, and turned the green ground under. Then before me in the near distance I saw the earth itself walking, the earth walking dark and aerated as it always does in every season, peeling the light back: The earth was plowing the men under, and the space, and the plow. No one sees us go under. No one sees generations churn, or civilizations. The green fields grow up forgetting. Ours is a planet sown in beings. Our generations overlap like shingles. We don't fall in rows like hay, but we fall. Once we get here, we spend forever on the globe, most of it tucked under. While we breathe, we open time like a path in the grass. We open time as a boat's stem slits the crest of the present.
— Annie Dillard, For the Time Being
We do our job and go. See? That is what Death is for. We work out all our little brains and all our little emotions, and then this lot begins afresh. Fresh and fresh! Perfectly simple. What's the trouble?
— H.G. Wells, The Food of the Gods
I think the only way to properly face doom is to be on time.
— Jennifer duBois, A Partial History of Lost Causes
Maybe the conference was an inversion layer of another kind, bringing me face-to-face with old friends and old places. With cancer and the Gap and the Old Man, railing about newfangled players and spicy food. Bringing me face-to-face early with death and old age and change.
— Connie Willis, The Best of Connie Willis: Award-Winning Stories
Morbidity and Mortality RoundsForgive me, body before me, for this.Forgive me for my bumbling hands, unschooledin how to touch: I meant to understandwhat fever was, not love. Forgive me formy stare, but when I look at you, I seemyself laid bare. Forgive me, body, forwhat seems like calculation when I takea breath before I cut you with my knife,because the cancer has to be removed.Forgive me for not telling you, but I’mno poet. Please forgive me, please. Forgivemy gloves, my callous greeting, my unease—you must not realize I just met deathagain. Forgive me if I say he lookedimpatient. Please, forgive me my despair,which once seemed more like recompense. Forgivemy greed, forgive me for not having moreto give you than this bitter pill. Forgive:for this apology, too late, for thoselike me whose crimes might seem innocuousand yet whose cruelty was obvious.Forgive us for these sins. Forgive me, please,for my confusing heart that sounds so muchlike yours. Forgive me for the night, when Isleep too, beside you under the same moon.Forgive me for my dreams, for my rough knees,for giving up too soon. Forgive me, please,for losing you, unable to forgive.
— Rafael Campo
He put his ear to his own chest and listened to the heart. How could the pulse go on, beat after beat, for all of life? No machine could run that long without a stumble. Ask not if the beating cranks are going to jam, but when.
— Giulio Tononi, Phi: A Voyage from the Brain to the Soul
The end is never worth the beginning.
— Vali Myers, Vali Myers
I know what the fear is.The fear is not for what is lost.What is lost is already in the wall.What is lost is already behind the locked doors.The fear is for what is still to be lost.
— Joan Didion, Blue Nights
It is the way of mortals. They fling themselves at life and emerge broken.
— Patricia Briggs, Fair Game
We only pass everything by like a transposition of air.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies
The great art of life is to moderate our passions. Objects of affection are like other belongings. We must love them enough to enrich our lives while we have them, not enough to impoverish our lives when they are gone.
— C.S. Lewis, The Pilgrim's Regress
It was a part of myself that was my enemy; I still had a childish illusion that the flesh on my own bones was somehow unique and precious to the universe, in some obscure corner of my mind I wanted the others to love me and make exceptions for me simply because I felt heat and cold, pain and loneliness as they did. Now this was gone once and for all, and I understood there were no exceptions and on one was invulnerable, we all had to share the same conditions and in the end this was simply mortality, the mortality of things as well as ourselves. After that I didn't expect anybody to love me...
— MacDonald Harris, Mortal Leap
Mortality is one of the greatest gifts ever bestowed. After a long and fruitful life, we are able to rest.
— Nancy Straight, Blood Debt
The Earth is an animal that shakes off its fleas when they dig too deep, bite too hard.
— Dave Eggers, A Hologram for the King
Whether at Naishápúr or Babylon, Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run, The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop, The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.
— Omar Khayyám
An Arundel TombSide by side, their faces blurred,The earl and countess lie in stone,Their proper habits vaguely shownAs jointed armour, stiffened pleat,And that faint hint of the absurd -The little dogs under their feet.Such plainness of the pre-BaroqueHardly involves the eye, untilIt meets his left-hand gauntlett, stillClasped empty in the other, andOne sees with a sharp tender shockHis hand withdrawn, holding her hand.They would not think to lie so long,Such faithfulness in effigyWas just a detail friends would see,A sculptor's sweet commissioned graceThrown off in helping to prolongThe Latin names around the base.They would not guess how early inTheir supine stationary voyageThe air would change to soundless damage,Turn the old tenantry away;How soon succeeding eyes beingTo look, not read. Rigidly, theyPersisted, linked, through lengths and breadthsOf time. Snow fell, undated. LightEach summer thronged the grass. A brightLitter of birdcalls strewed the sameBone-littered ground. And up the pathsThe endless altered people cameWashing at their identity.Now helpless in the hollowOf an unarmorial age, a troughOf smoke in slow suspended skeinsAbove their scrap of history,Only an attitude remains.Time has transfigured them intoUntruth. The stone fidelityThey hardly meant has come to beTheir final blazon and to proveOur almost-instinct almost-true:What will survive of us is love.
— Philip Larkin, The Whitsun Weddings
Think not, O Mortal, vainly gay.That Thou from Human Woes is free,The bitter cup I drink today,Tomorrow may be drunk by thee.
— Jane Grey
This love of theirs, with its reassuring domesticity and its easy silences, its permanence, has yoked Sally directly to the machinery of mortality itself. Now there is a loss beyond imagining.
— Michael Cunningham, The Hours
Your only real problem is mortality! No religion can solve this problem, but science can do!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
The purpose of life is to contribute in some way to making things better.
— Robert F. Kennedy
The cities, the roads, the countryside, the people I meet - they all begin to blur. I tell myself I am searching for something. But more and more, it feels like I am wandering, waiting for something to happen to me, something that will change everything, something that my whole life has been leading up to.
— Khaled Hosseini, And the Mountains Echoed
You were ordered to obey to Allah, and you were create to perform good deeds.
— Hazrat Ali Ibn Abu-Talib A.S
Things don't have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What's the function of a galaxy? I don't know if our life has a purpose and I don't see that it matters. What does matter is that we're a part. Like a thread in a cloth or a grass-blade in a field. It is and we are. What we do is like wind blowing on the grass.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven
Most men have no purpose but to exist, Abraham; to pass quietly through history as minor characters upon a stage they cannot even see. To be the playthings of tyrants. But you...you were born to fight tyranny.
— Seth Grahame-Smith, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
To empty the heart does not mean to not love. On the contrary, true love, as God intented it, is purest when it is not based on a false attachment. The process of first emptying the heart can be found in the beginning half of the shahada (declaration of faith).
— Yasmin Mogahed, Reclaim Your Heart: Personal Insights on Breaking Free from Life's Shackles
It was the ghost of rationality itself ... This is the ghost of normal everyday assumptions which declares that the ultimate purpose of life, which is to keep alive, is impossible, but that this is the ultimate purpose of life anyway, so that great minds struggle to cure diseases so that people may live longer, but only madmen ask why. One lives longer in order that he may live longer. There is no other purpose. That is what the ghost says.
— Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
A small change can make a big difference. You are the only one who can make our world a better place to inhabit. So, don’t be afraid to take a stand .
— Ankita Singhal
You know, the immortality of the soul, free will and all that -- it's all very amusing to talk about up to the age of twenty-two, but not after that. Then one ought to be giving one's mind to having fun without catching the pox, arranging one's life as comfortably as possible, having a few decent drawings on the wall, and above all writing well. That's the important thing: well-made sentences...and then a few metaphors. Yes, a few metaphors. They embellish a man's existence.
— Théophile Gautier
I want to make my mark,' he says.But what target, I wonder, are you going to hit?
— Cecil Castellucci, Boy Proof
You're living your days at the moment how a sheep grazes, meandering, not engaged with anything much.
— Nikki Gemmell, The Bride Stripped Bare
Life does exist. It's the purpose that count.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
there may be a time in one's lifethat might feel and brush against a sensitive touchthat might be the reminder and assurancethat what never is lost brings a meaning and purpose..LT
— levi paul taylor
I have songs to write and songs to sing and planes to fly and I want to see my old yellow truck again.
— Jennifer Niven, Velva Jean Learns to Fly
When God chooses you to deliver a message, to have a purpose, no one and nothing can reverse the course of His plan.
— Carlos Wallace, The Other 99 T.Y.M.E.S: Train Your Mind to Enjoy Serenity
God is a God of purpose with eternal significance to everything he does
— Sunday Adelaja
I keep finding myself confronted with the question, “What is the aim of man’s life?” and, no matter what result my reflections reach, no matter what I take to be life’s source, I invariably arrive at the conclusion that the purpose of our human existence is to afford a maximum of help towards the universal development of everything that exists.If I meditate as I contemplate nature, I perceive everything in nature to be in constant process of development, and each of nature’s constituent portions to be unconsciously contributing towards the development of others. But man is, though a like portion of nature, a portion gifted with consciousness, and therefore bound, like the other portions, to make conscious use of his spiritual faculties in striving for the development of everything existent.If I meditate as I contemplate history, I perceive the whole human race to be for ever aspiring towards the same end.If I meditate on reason, if I pass in review man’s spiritual faculties, I find the soul of every man to have in it the same unconscious aspiration, the same imperative demand of the spirit.If I meditate with an eye upon the history of philosophy, I find everywhere, and always, men to have arrived at the conclusion that the aim of human life is the universal development of humanity.If I meditate with an eye upon theology, I find almost every nation to be cognizant of a perfect existence towards which it is the aim of mankind to aspire.So I too shall be safe in taking for the aim of my existence a conscious striving for the universal development of everything existent. I should be the unhappiest of mortals if I could not find a purpose for my life, and a purpose at once universal and useful… Wherefore henceforth all my life must be a constant, active striving for that one purpose.
— Leo Tolstoy
You may lose many things in the way you have chosen, don't look back but serve your purpose.
— Giridhar Alwar, My Quest For Happy Life
Never forget who you are, never forget where you came from and why you are here on this beautiful planet.
— Euginia Herlihy
If you have learnt enjoying life without purpose, like a flowing river, you have learnt the art of living.
— Girdhar Joshi, Some Mistakes Have No Pardon
Your Purpose in life goes beyond 9-5pm and obviously beyond your pension age. Identify, pursue and nurture until it becomes a lifestyle.
— Oscar Bimpong
The flowing river nonchalantly reminds us of life: flowing relentlessly
—  flowing purposelessly. Life without purpose.
Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.
— Westminster Shorter Catechism
Either give it your all or don't even try!
— Avijeet Das
Fix your course to a star and you can navigate through any storm
— Leonardo da Vinci
Everyone has a purpose in life - even if yours is to go through it believing you don't have one!
— Mani S. Sivasubramanian, The Icedrop
We all are wearing many hundred glasses of different colors. So, everyone see the world in different views. Somehow, if we could remove those glasses we can see the world with real colors. Name of the most difficult to remove glass is ‘there are permanent things of mine’.
— Muditha Champika, Theories of Nature and the Universe: Comparison of Pure Buddhist Philosophy and Science
The fact that you can do something doesn't mean you are called to do it.
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
Let's not become too busy to keep in touch with those who really matter most and need us. Life's short but let's make an indelible purposeful and powerful impact with it
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
The purpose of life is to know, and to recreate, Who You Are.
— Neale Donald Walsch
There is power, value, happiness and fulfillment in a life of purpose.
— Auliq-Ice
Purpose is service within a predestined jurisdiction.
— Luthando Daniels
Having a strong intent and purposes makes life worthwhile.
— Steven Redhead, Life Is Simply A Game
The pursuit of joy is the purpose of life.
— Steven Redhead, Life Is Simply A Game
The point is, there is no point. Choose your own!
— Ann Leckie, Ancillary Mercy
Always remember the primary purpose of your life is living in tune with your energy pattern, find the true expression for the energy and go with the flow!
— Ramana Pemmaraju
Now to enjoy the treasures of God in the similitude of God, is the most perfect blessedness God could devise. For the treasures of God are the most perfect treasures, and the manner of God is the most perfect manner.
— Thomas Traherne, Centuries of Meditations
Listen to the needs of your spirit and start living your life with purpose
— Latorria Freeman, Turn My Life Around Discovering Your Purpose
With everything there is what to do.
— Auliq Ice
When we see marriage as our sole purpose, we find ourselves with nowhere to go when we finally arrive.
— Debra Fileta, True Love Dates: Your Indispensable Guide to Finding the Love of your Life
The purpose of life is to fulfill the will of God
— Sunday Adelaja
It is this brighter side, the romantic side, the emotional side, that appeals to me.
— Fennel Hudson, A Waterside Year - Fennel's Journal - No. 2
The willingness to become the answer to the needs of other people is what makes a person really successful
— Sunday Adelaja
There is a sense of danger in leaving what you know, even if what you know isn’t much. These mill towns with their narrow lanes and often narrow minds were all I really knew and I feared that if I left it behind, I would lose it and not find anything to replace it. The other reason I didn’t want to go was because I wanted to be the kind of person who stays, who builds a stable and predictable life. But I wasn’t one of the people, nor would I ever be.  I had a vision for my life. It wasn’t clear, but it was beautiful and involved leaving my history and my poverty behind me. I wasn’t happy about who I was or where I was, but I didn’t worry about it. It didn’t define me. We’re always in the making. God always has us on his anvil, melting, bending and shaping us for another purpose.  It was time to change, to find a new purpose.
— John William Tuohy
It wasn't hard going to the gym, as long as he went as soon as he woke up, before he had time to think about not going. Those morning workouts made him feel like he was starting his day like a pinball, with a giant shot of momentum. The feeling sometimes didn’t wear off until six or seven at night (when it was usually overtaken by the feeling that he was just bouncing haplessly from one situation to the next without any real purpose or direction).
— Rainbow Rowell, Attachments
I'd finally reached the end of myself, all my self-reliance and denial and pride unraveling into nothingness, leaving only a blank Alison-shaped space behind. It was finished. I was done.But just as I felt myself dissolving on the tide of my own self-condemnation, the dark waves receded, and I floated into a celestial calm.I saw the whole universe laid out before me, a vast shining machine of indescribable beauty and complexity. Its design was too intricate for me to understand, and I knew I could never begin to grasp more than the smallest idea of its purpose. But I sensed that every part of it, from quark to quasar, was unique and - in some mysterious way - signifi
— R.J. Anderson, Ultraviolet
We are to work not to satisfy our own needs, but rather for the good of others and for the purpose of establishing the Kingdom of God here on earth.
— Sunday Adelaja
One of the man’s major purposes is to have dominion over the earth, in the same way as God hasdominion over the universe.
— Sunday Adelaja
Purpose will make you realise the reason of your existence, it will restore your mind sight, you will start to dream and you will see visions. Your dreams will lead you to set goals, goals will lead you to mission accomplishments and vision will take you to the higher places.
— Euginia Herlihy
You are a story worthy of being told,A person made to be loved,With a life meant to be lived.
— Nadia Hasan, From the Cafe and Beyond: A Collection of Poems and Other Writings
They say, find a purpose in life and live it. But, sometimes, it is only after you have lived that you recognize your life had a purpose, and likely one you never had in mind. And now that I had fulfilled mine, I felt aimless and adrift
— Khaled Hosseini, And the Mountains Echoed
One person can make a difference, and every person should try.
— Thomas E. Cronin
Never allow anyone who has not invested in you to define you. You always need to see proof of a Return on Investment.
— Gail Hayes
When in brief flashes of serendipity you glimpse what you were born to do... Do it. No matter what. Take steps toward it, even if they are depressingly small at first. With each inch closer to your central magic, you will feel it. It is unmistakable for anything else. It's called purpose.
— Jacob Nordby
Don't you feel that at this rate there isn't much in it? In what? In living at all, going on as we do. What do we get out of it? Take a day like this: you waken up in the morning and you're glad to be alive; it's a good enough day for anything, and you feel sure something will happen. Well, whether it's a workday or a holiday, it's all the same in the end. At night you go to bed - nothing has happened.
— Willa Cather
Blurred vision makes you misunderstand and misinterpret your purpose in life.
— Richard Okorie
Why stay we on earth except to grow?
— Robert Browning
Because any fool knows that to work hard at something you want to accomplish is the only way to be happy. But beyond that it is entirely up to you. You’ve got to do for yourself all the seeking and finding concerned with what you want to do. Anyone but yourself is useless to you there.
— Eugene O'Neill
Our ultimate purpose in life lies in selfless service to others. Selflessly giving of ourselves to our spouses, our children, our friends, our community, our employers and or our customers unlocks a treasure chest of priceless gifts for both the recipient and you. Let's go the extra mile, in all we do, this week and see what riches we can discover. ~Jason Versey
— Jason Versey, A Walk with Prudence
Many people have wonderful dreams, but die without realizing them. It is because they do not know how to get a hold of a dream and work with it to make it happen. Everything happens by laws." (From the Secrets To Divine Manifestations by Alain Yaovi M. Dagba
— Alain Yaovi M. Dagba, Secrets To Divine Manifestations
What the world thought made little difference. Rembrandt had topaint. Whether he painted well or badly didn't matter; painting was thestuff that held him together as a man. The chief value of art, Vincent, liesin the expression it gives to the artist. Rembrandt fulfilled what he knewto be his life purpose; that justified him. Even if his work had beenworthless, he would have been a thousand times more successful than ifhe had put down his desire and become the richest merchant inAmsterdam. (Mendes Da Costa
— Irving Stone, Lust for Life
The divine pattern is your life purpose. It is a story about your divine self and it is written within—your heart
— Alain Yaovi M. Dagba, Secrets to Divine Manifestations: Finding Your Life Purpose Through the Rebirth of Your Soul
Our Purpose Is to Be Who We Are
— Our Mission Is to Find Something to Live For.
Nature had been busy designing him, as she had been busy with all normal men, for the purpose of loving. She had spent ten thousand centuries — ay, a hundred thousand and a million centuries — upon the task, and he was the best she could do.
— Jack London "Martin Eden"
I did not know what I was going to do with my life; before anything else I wanted to find an answer, my answer, to the timeless questions, and then after that I would decide what I would become. If I did not begin by discovering what was the grand purpose of life on earth, I said to myself, how would I be able to discover the purpose of my tiny ephemeral life? And if I did not give my life a purpose, how would I be able to engage in action? I was not interested in finding what life's purpose was objectively - this, I divined, was impossible and futile - but simply what purpose I, of my own free will, could give it in accord with my spiritual and intellectual needs. Whether or not this purpose was the true one did not, at that time, have any great significance for me. The important thing was that I should find (should create) a purpose congruent with my own self, and thus, by following it, reel out my particular desires and abilities to the furthest possible limit. For then at last I would be collaborating harmoniously with the totality of the universe.
— Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco
Who am I?" "What is the purpose of my life?" These questions arise spontaneously throughout our lives, either unbidden or through conscious intent. Anyone who wishes to live an authentic life must answer these questions, regardless of whether they believe in the existence of the soul or practice a religion. If these queries remain unanswered, life will more than likely remain superficial and empty, in spite of any material abundance. If you wish to make the soul's journey, then I suggest you ask yourself these questions relentlessly and ruthlessly, and listen carefully.
— Ilchi Lee, Human Technology: A Toolkit for Authentic Living
What is the purpose of living if there are no perils to be encountered and overcome?
— David Almond, The Boy Who Swam with Piranhas
life without a purpose is like an unsharpened pencil
—  it has no point.
Too many people think that finding the reason God placed us here on earth will come in one assignment with a big title and complete job description. I believe that discovering our purpose will unfold slowly, like a seed planted deep in the ground.
— Lysa TerKeurst, Becoming More Than a Good Bible Study Girl
The purpose of life is to perfect love, and love is selfless action. Therefore, the purpose of life is to live in a state of fearless union.
— RaSoul
The great and glorious masterpiece of man is to live with purpose.
— Michel de Montaigne
If life is not a celebration, why remember it ? If life --- mine or that of my fellow man --- is not an offering to the other, what are we doing on this earth?
— Elie Wiesel, Open Heart
You may or may not make a million dollars in life, a song may not be sung in praise of you, monuments may not be erected in your name but promise me this: to live life fully, to give wholeheartedly, to do your best with what you have, to impact souls, to use your gifts and talents to serve humanity, to live, love and leave a legacy in your own way.
— Bernard Kelvin Clive, EnjoyLife 360 - Simple Secrets to a Happier Fulfilling Life!
If the path you are walking today won't lead you to your desired destination, then you are STROLLING
— Fela Durotoye
And in that moment I experience a revelation.I realize now that it was a painful sense that the world is purposeless, the lazy fruit of a misunderstanding, but in that moment I was able to translate what I felt only as: "God does not exist.
— Umberto Eco, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana
Look, the job of life is to turn your negatives into positives
— Michka Assayas, Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas
Coming into a realization that there is purpose in why God has given all of us the gift of life- To promote the cause of Christ and God's Kingdom in a creative manner that expresses our uniqueness.
— R. Alan Woods, The Journey Is the Destination: A Book of Quotes With Commentaries
Wit beyond measure is man’s greatest treasure.
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Brevity is the soul of wit.
— William Shakespeare, Hamlet
The world was my oyster but I used the wrong fork.
— Oscar Wilde
Tact: the ability to describe others as they see themselves.
— Abraham Lincoln
I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it sho
— Blaise Pascal, The Provincial Letters
There's a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it
—  wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with w
A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.
— Oscar Wilde
On some days you get what you want, and on others, you get what you need.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century
Men are not nearly as evolved as women are, nor as intelligent, evidently
— Sarah MacLean, The Season
Let me be clear. Last I was aware you were neither my husband nor my father nor my King. Therefore, any control you may imagine you hold over me is just that- imaginary
— Sarah MacLean, The Season
Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable
— Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist
Writing a book is like sliding down a rainbow! Marketing it is like trudging through a field of chewed bubblegum on a hot, sticky day.
— Betty Dravis
I no longer believe in love," she said bitterly. "When people claim to have lost their heart, it's usually only their wits that have vanished.
— Peter Prange, The Philosopher's Kiss
A witty saying proves nothing.
— Voltaire
There is a monsterous deal of stupid quizzing, & common-place nonsense talked, but scarcely any wit.
— Jane Austen
One can have a wit, but not a witless
— Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings
Yes, I'm shallow, I don't mind admitting it. Perhaps I should admit that there's no end to the depths of my shallowness.
— Franny Billingsley, Chime
Big words from a guy who's trussed up like a turkey. What are you going to do, wobble over here like an upside- down turtle to snap me in half?""The logistics of breaking you are easy. The only question is when.
— Susan Ee
If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once begun upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time.
— Thomas de Quincey
Wit ought to be a glorious treat, like caviar. Never spread it about like marmalade.
— Noël Coward
I spent the last Friday of summer vacation spreading hot, sticky tar across the roof of George Washington High. My companions were Dopey, Toothless, and Joe, the brain surgeons in charge of building maintenance. At least they were getting paid. I was working forty feet above the ground, breathing in sulfur fumes from Satan's vomitorium, for
— Laurie Halse Anderson, Twisted
He remembered having said to his uncle (with a solemn dogmatism better befitting a much younger man): "Surely it is possible to love with the head as well as the heart." Mr. Delagardie had replied, somewhat drily: "No doubt; so long as you do not end by thinking with your entrails instead of your brain.
— Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon
This was a lucky recollection -- it saved her from something like regret.
— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
In fact, Lig never formally resigned his editorship—he merely left his office late one morning, and has never returned since. Though well over a century has now passed, many members of the Guide staff still retain the romantic notion that he has simply popped out for a sandwich and will yet return to put in a solid afternoon's work. Strictly speaking, all editors since Lig Lury Jr., have therefore been designated acting editors, and Lig's desk is still preserved the way he left it, with the addition of a small sign that says LIG LURY, JR., EDITOR, MISSING, PRESUMED FED.
— Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything
Nothing evokes the prurient like puritanism.
— Christopher Moore, Practical Demonkeeping
Hey, have you heard that one about the difference between me, Wit, and my loutish cousin, Hilarity? No? Okay, so I walk into a bar, you see, very unassuming, and order a martini. Then the bartender, Hilarity, hauls off and squirts me in the face with a seltzer bottle, ruining my n ice new camel hair suit, dousing my monocle and my watch fob, soaking my cravat. So, do I let him have what for, and blow my top? I do not. I simply say:Sorry, I believe I said 'very dry'.
— Chip Kidd, The Learners
To have a viable civilization, people have to have a benign government, a semblance of education, spare time, imagination, and manners
— Jonathan Chamberlain Williams
For a poet he threw a very accurate milk bottle.
— Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
Charisma is the ability to influence without logic.
— Quentin Crisp
M'sieur, I am as a slave to my wife." He kissed the tips of his fingers. "I am as the dirt beneath her feet." He clasped his hands. "I must bestow on her all that she desires, or die!""Pray make use of my sword, " invited his Grace. "It is in the corner behind you.
— Georgette Heyer, These Old Shades
Captain Billings," he drawled finally, "if you will pardon my candor, I might remark that you are something of an ass, don't you know.
— Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes
I am a mediocre being, a bit cunning.
— Renée Vivien
When I'm in love, I can't stand anyone.
— Stefano Benni, Margherita Dolce Vita
If life is a game... I need new dice!
— Jay Little
You would wind up as a cat, I told her. They don't need anyone else. I need you, she replied.Well, I said. Maybe I'll come back as catnip.
— Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper
Only one English word adequately describes his transformation of the islands from worthless to priceless: magical.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Galápagos
His foe was folly and his weapon wit.
— Anthony Hope
Wit is the thought process that generates truly funny observations, as well as the most incisive comments, lasting quips, and brilliant asides. To say wit is mean is like saying the sun is mean for burning you: The giant ball of hot plasma at the center of our solar system is bigger than that, and why weren't you wearing sunscreen in the first place?
— Benjamin Errett, Elements of Wit: Mastering the Art of Being Interesting
Deliver me from my disciples!
— Oscar Wilde, The Autobiography of Oscar Wilde
That's what you think of me, is it, girl?" said his lordship, a glint in his
— Georgette Heyer, The Unknown Ajax
...it is indeed a street of so impertinent a nature, so unfortunately connected with the great London and Oxford roads, and the principal inn of the city, that a day never passes in which parties of ladies, however important their business, whether in quest of pastry, millinery, or even (as in the present case) of young men, are not detained on one side or other by carriages, horsemen, or carts. This evil had been felt and lamented, at least three times a day, by Isabella since her residence in Bath...
— Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
Going to marry her? Impossible! You mean a part of her; he could not marry her all himself. It would be a case, not of bigamy but trigamy; there is enough of her to furnish wives for the whole parish. One man marry her! - it is monstrous! You might people a colony with her; or give an assembly with her; or perhaps take your morning's walk round her, always provided there were frequent resting places, and you were in rude health. I once was rash enough to try walking round her before breakfast, but only got half way and gave it up exhausted. Or you might read the Riot Act and disperse her; in short, you might do anything but marry her!
— Sydney Smith
Jason smiled and took a sip of his coke before responding. “I’m not sure how to reply to that. I thought about just giving you a nasty look. But I see you already have one.
— Mark A. Cooper, Face-Off
A fool is a man who believes glory can be found at the tip of a sword instead of on the tip of his tongue. That is life’s cruel trick.
— Natalia Jaster, Trick
Always remember that you can explain things for people, but you can't comphrend for them.
— Shannon L. Alder
Always remember that you have been called worse things by better people.
— Shannon L. Alder
Snark is a fabulous defense mechanism.
— Betsy Schow
There is no greater hiding place for a secret than within the mind of a madman.
— Alexander Ferrick, HACK3R
There's no greater proof of an impoverished mind than its inability to be witty except at other people's expense.
— Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
I have great affection for you, Roy" I answered, "but I don't think you are the sort of person I'd care to have breakfast with.
— W. Somerset Maugham, Cakes and Ale
Those who are most sincere are also the most morally suspect, as well as being incapable of producing or appreciating wit.
— Ian M. Banks
Happy hour?" Jason says. "It's barely noon, Grams""Oh, shush, you. You'll have some, yes?'"Well"-he smiles slyly and wiggles his eyebrows-"if you insist". Every time, it's the same thing. Leaning in, he rubs his hands together expectantly. The drinking age in New York State was raised last year, so technically, I suppose, this is still illegal for my grandson. But the Jews didn't spend forty years wandering the desert so that I could forfeit a gin and tonic with my progeny...
— Susan Jane Gilman
When I was young, I used to watch a lot of old movies and read a lot of books, and I was always amazed at how every one of them had some helpless damsel who was oh so happy to fall into the hero’s arms, and I’m not that kind of girl"- Yvonne
— Alexander Ferrick, HACK3R
He listened to her with perfect indifference while she chose to entertain herself in this manner; and as his composure convinced her that all was safe, her wit flowed long.
— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Her face collapsed like a bad poem
— Marge Simon
NE'TWORK: Any thing reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.......RETI'CULATED: Made of network; formed with interstitial vacuities.
— Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language: an Anthology
I hope to return. I’ll do so if I’m not killed. Probably will anyway.
— Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings
A palindrome,” I said the first time she told me. She looked at me, perplexed, and that’s when I knew I could never love her. What a waste of a palindrome she was, that Hannah.-Owen Gentry
— Colleen Hoover, Confess
I follow my own methods, and tell as much or as little as I choose. That is the advantage of being unofficial.
— Arthur Conan Doyle, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
Being a Gentleman, has more to do with hiding his flaws, than exhibiting the virtues!
— Ramana Pemmaraju
I moved out of my head office and went out of my mind.
— Benny Bellamacina, Little Luigi: A Musical Adventure
It is not that I object to the work, mind you; I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. I love to keep it by me: the idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart.
— Jerome K. Jerome
With a bit of luck and a lot of hard work, this writing thing may just pan out.
— Rebel Miller
There was a party of well-dressed people with Gilt, and as they progressed accoss the room the whole place began to revolve around the big man, gold being very dense and having a gravity all of its own.
— Terry Pratchett
I wonder now how we got by when you weren't here.""I have no doubt the devastation was widespread, the suffering universal.""Indeed, it was the Dark Ages in the annals of Mrs. Dawlish's house. Ignorance was thick on the ground, and unenlkghtenment befogged all the windows.
— Sherry Thomas
Sometimes being given the elbow can turn out to be the best hand.
— Benny Bellamacina, The King of Rhyme
Jack shall have Jill.Nought shall go ill.
— William Shakespeare
Really?""No. I'm being ironic. Or is it sarcastic? I can never remember.""Irony's cleverer, so you're probably being sarcastic.
— Jonathan Stroud, The Screaming Staircase
That's a very murky position," objected Felix."So's the weather. But this is England, we must learn to live with uncertainty.
— Gail Carriger, Waistcoats & Weaponry
My wit is only as stupid as the audience.
— Aleksandra Ninkovic, Write like no one is reading
In retrospect, I am very nearly as sharp as I pretend to be.
— Lyndsay Faye, Seven for a Secret
I’m not a serpent, Father. I’m a crow.
— Eli Easton, The Lion and the Crow
The wit taught by God to the beeIs withheld from the lion and the wild ass.
— Jalaluddin Rumi, Selected Poems
Now don't let us give ourselves a parcel of airs, and pretend that the oaths we make free with in this land of liberty of ours are our own; and because we have the spirit to swear them,—imagine that we have had the wit to invent them too.
— Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
Great wits jump
— Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
Frame everything and some of it will become art.
— Benny Bellamacina, Philosophical Uplifting Quotes volume 2
It was rather too late in the day to set about being simple-minded and ignorant.
— Jane Austen
Yes, well, I'm not asking you to hide anything. Hiding won't help you. You can't very well hide from a pit, can you? You just need to avoid falling into it." - Brohan Madhrarigal
— Gregory S. Close, In Siege of Daylight
By my hand and for the good of the state
—  the bearer has done what has been done. Hmmmm ~~~ one should be careful what one writes for one never knows into whose hands it may fall.
They seek him here. They seek him there. Those Frenchies seek him everywhere. Is he in Heaven? Or is he in Hell? That damned, illusive pimpernel.
— Sir Peter Blackney "Scarlet Pimpernel"
if you can’t acquaint an opponent with reason, you must acquaint his head with the sidewalk.
— Lee Child, Never Go Back
Does the king know you're back?""Nope! I'm trying to think of a properly dramatic way to inform him. Perhaps a hundred chasmfiends marching in unison, singing an ode to my magnificence.""That sounds… hard.""Yeah, the storming things have real trouble tuning their tonic chords and maintaining just intonation.""I have no idea what you just said.""Yeah, the storming things have real trouble tuning their tonic chords and maintaining just intonation.
— Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings
This is a lot more satisfying," he said, "when I have intelligent life whom I can render awed, rapt with attention for my clever verbosity."The ugly lizard-crab-thing on the next rock over clicked its claw, an almost hesitant sound."Your right, of course," Wit said. "My usual audience isn't particularly intelligent. That was also the obvious joke, however, so shame on you.
— Brandon Sanderson, Words of Radiance
If you've brains it's better than beauty - brains last, beauty doesn't.
— L.M. Montgomery, Emily of New Moon
I suppose we all tend to want the impossible. And sometimes in attempting it we achieve something near enough to the impossible to elicit satisfaction.
— Julie Anne Long, What I Did For a Duke
you ask too many questions," snapped Cletus.I kept my gaze on Roman. "that's because I get too few answers.
— David Baldacci, The Finisher
They are fond of fun and therefore witty, wit being well-bred insolence.
— Aristotle, The Rhetoric & The Poetics of Aristotle
Both were military. That was clear.Reacher could tell by their haircuts. No civilian barber would be as pragmatic or as brutal.
— Lee Child, Never Go Back
Lingerer, my brain is on fire with impatience; and you tarry so long!
— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Jimmy Murray, you are an ass,' said Aunt Ruth, angrily.'Well, we're cousins,' agreed Cousin Jimmy pleasantly.
— L.M. Montgomery, Emily Climbs
Cardinal Campeggio has implored Katherine to bow to the king's will, accept that her marriage is invalid and retire to a convent. Certainly, she says sweetly, she will become a nun: if the king will become a monk.
— Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
I wish for you the wisdom to mind your own business.
— Steve Maraboli
When she walked by the two officers, they didn't recognize her. "Have you seen the luscious bonbon with the golden braids?" She grinned up at them with such impish mischief that they almost forgot their quest for the singer. "She is with her lover," Hannah said. "But she can always handle one or two more." She winked at them. "Go there, through that door." She made her escape while the uniformed hobbledehoys gawked and gaped and finally burst into the dressing room where Franz, the three-hundred-pound juggling strongman, was adjusting his loincloth. "I ought not do it," Hannah said aloud to herself as chaos erupted behind her. "I just can't seem to help myself. it is a shame, really.
— Laura L. Sullivan, Love by the Morning Star
Money won is twice as sweet as money earned.
— Paul   Newman
Two blind men waited at the end of an era, contemplating beauty.
— Brandon Sanderson, Words of Radiance
I’ll admit, Jasnah, that I empathize with your skepticism, but I don’t agree with it. I just think you've been looking for God in the wrong plac
— Brandon Sanderson, Words of Radiance
This lot won't suffer you forever.I wouldn't see you dead by their knives; I see a fine man within you Wit.""Yes, He tasted quite delicious.
— Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings
My name is Mr Bread." He began writing his name neatly on the board. "But you can call me Peter."Suddenly there was quiet, as thirty little brains whirred."Pita Bread!" proclaimed a ginger-haired boy from the back.
— David Walliams, Billionaire Boy
JACK.I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can’t go anywhere without meeting clever people. The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we had a few fools left.ALGERNON.We have.JACK.I should extremely like to meet them. What do they talk about?ALGERNON.The fools? Oh! about the clever people, of course.JACK.What fools!
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
Wit penetrates
—  humor envelops. Wit is a function of verbal intelligence
Hyperbolic statements will be the death of us all
— William McGregor Robson
I didn't cross the line, you drew it in after I traversed it.
— Russell Brand
Well, I can throw a mean comeback, so there's that. I will crush them on wit.
— Rachel Caine, Fall of Night
It is the curse of the competent―not to be called upon.
— Robert Priest, Reading the Bible Backwards
I shall always inspire many hearts in timeless moments.
— Angelica Hopes, Rhythm of a Heart, Music of a Soul
Sometimes you've to be clever than a coyote to out wit the devil.
— Billy S. VanOrsdol
And here, I believe, the wit is generally misunderstood. In reality, it lies in desiring another to kiss your a-- for having just before threatened to kick his; for I have observed very accurately, that no one ever desires you to kick that which belongs to himself, nor offers to kiss this part in another.
— Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
The important thing to remember is not to forget
— Benny Bellamacina, Philosophical Uplifting Quotes and Poems
The wittiest authors raise the very slightest of smiles.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human
Good madonna, give me leave toprove you a fool.
— William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Graham's life is as tense as an overstretched simile.
— Zane Stumpo, Schrodingers Caterpillar
Look, this is helping me out quite a bit, but could you just get to the punishment part? We're at the end of World War Two in history, and I can't wait to find out who wins.
— Rob Thomas, Rats Saw God
Wit makes its own welcome and levels all distinctions.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Half is better than none unless it be of a wit.
— Susan Lendroth
It was Colonel Parkman who upped stakes, crossed the border, and named our town, thus perversely commemorating a battle in which he'd lost. (Though perhaps that's not so unusual: many people take a curatorial interest in their own scars.) He's shown astride his horse, waving a sword and about to gallop into the nearby petunia bed: a craggy man with seasoned eyes and pointed beard, every sculptor's idea of every cavalry leader. No one knows what Colonel Parkman really looked like, since he left no pictorial evidence of himself and the statue wasn't erected until 1885, but he looks like this now. Such is the tyranny of Art.On the left-hand side of the lawn, also with a petunia bed, is an equally mythic figure: the Weary Soldier, his three top shirt buttons undone, his neck bowed as if for the headman's axe, his uniform rumpled, his helmet askew, leaning on his malfunctioning Ross rifle. Forever young, forever exhausted, he tops the War Memorial, his skin burning green in the sun, pigeon droppings running down his face like tears.
— Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
I'm very fond of experimental housekeeping.
— Jane Austen
The problem is you make the tricks look good. You are a brilliant acrobat, and a witty comedian. You are skillful. People want a fool to be foolish--trip on banana peels and grin and spout nonsense. These men want fools to make them feel better about themselves, not to remind them what they lack.
— Kelli Swofford Nielsen, Journey to the Fringe
I'm eating a massive pastrami sandwich. It's so beautiful I might cry. Just so you know.
— Lucy Robinson, The Greatest Love Story of All Time
I was going to write a sharp witty email full of devastating one-liners but I suspect you want something nicer than that
— Lucy Robinson, The Greatest Love Story of All Time
Old Madame du Deffand and her friends talked for fifty years without stopping. And of it all, what remains? Perhaps three witty sayings. So that we are at liberty to suppose either that nothing was said, or that nothing witty was said, or that the fraction of three witty sayings lasted eighteen thousand two hundred and fifty nights, which does not leave a liberal allowance of wit for any one of them.
— Virginia Woolf, Orlando
You can tell a really wonderful quote by the fact that it's attributed to a whole raft of wits.
— Anna Quindlen, Imagined London: A Tour of the World's Greatest Fictional City