Literary Quotes

A contemporary artist can use the findings of all epochs and all styles, from the most primitive literary expressions up to the most refined products of the baroque.
Juan Goytisolo

A fashionable milieu is one in which everybody's opinion is made up of the opinion of all the others. Has everybody a different opinion? Then it is a literary milieu.
Marcel Proust

A key to my thinking has always been the almost fanatical belief that what I was engaged in was a literary art form. That belief was compounded out of ego and necessity, I guess, a combination of the two.
Will Eisner


A life spent largely among books, and in the exercise of a literary profession, has very obvious drawbacks, as a subject-matter, when one comes to write about it.
Mary A. Ward

A literary critic is someone who can't write, but who loves to show he would have been a wonderful writer if only he could!
Brian Lumley

A literary journal is intended to connect writer with reader; the role of the editor is to mediate.
John Barton

A neurotic can perfectly well be a literary genius, but his greatest danger is always that he will not recognize when he is dull.
Louis Auchincloss

All literary men are Red Sox fans - to be a Yankee fan in a literate society is to endanger your life.
John Cheever

And in down times it shakes a lot of the bad SF out, a lot the stuff that was bought for literary reasons, which is neither entertaining nor great literature.
Jerry Pournelle

Anonymous sources are a practice of American journalism in the 20th and 21st century, a relatively recent practice. The literary tradition of anonymity goes back to the Bible.
Joe Klein

Any biographer must of necessity become a pilgrim a peripatetic, obsessed literary pilgrim, a traveler with four eyes.
Leon Edel

Any poet, if he is to survive beyond his 25th year, must alter; he must seek new literary influences; he will have different emotions to express.
T. S. Eliot

Anybody who comes to the cinema is bringing they're whole sexual history, their literary history, their movie literacy, their culture, their language, their religion, whatever they've got. I can't possibly manipulate all of that, nor do I want to.
David Cronenberg

As I said earlier, there are no writers who could create a literary vision of the new reality.
Andrzej Wajda

As in political so in literary action a man wins friends for himself mostly by the passion of his prejudices and the consistent narrowness of his outlook.
Joseph Conrad

As the poet has expected, the alarms now are sounded, for - and it must be said again - the birth of a poet is always a threat to the existing cultural order, because he attempts to break through the circle of literary castes to reach the center.
Salvatore Quasimodo

At 20, 25, 30, we begin to realise that the possibilities of escape are getting fewer. We have jobs, children, partners, debts. This is the part of us to which literary fiction speaks.
Mark Haddon

At last, in 1611, was made, under the auspices of King James, the famous King James version; and this is the great literary monument of the English language.
Lafcadio Hearn

Black writers, of whatever quality, who step outside the pale of what black writers are supposed to write about, or who black writers are supposed to be, are condemned to silences in black literary circles that are as total and as destructive as any imposed by racism.
Audre Lorde

Books on horse racing subjects have never done well, and I am told that publishers had come to think of them as the literary version of box office poison.
Laura Hillenbrand

Bridget Jones is part of literary lore now and actually to be a part of it is enormously flattering.
Colin Firth

But a writer's contribution is literary and a film is not literary. When you take that stuff off the page, and cast the people who are going to fit into those roles, that's what being a director is.
Taylor Hackford

But it's not just a game of finding literary references.
Dan Simmons

But that incessant drive to be out there in the literary universe that was important to me when I was in my twenties, like going to a Paris Review party or whatever, that seems totally irrelevant now.
Rick Moody

Certainly the most diverse, if minor, pastime of literary life is the game of Find the Author.
Arthur Miller

Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.
Samuel Johnson

Countries under foreign command quickly forget their history, their past, their tradition, their national symbols, their way of living, often their own literary language.
Slobodan Milosevic

Doesn't all experience crumble in the end to mere literary material?
Ellen Glasgow

During half a century of literary work, I have endeavoured to introduce the philosophy of evolution into the sphere of literature, and to inspire my readers to think in evolutionary terms.
Johannes Vilhelm Jensen

Each book, intuitively sensed and, in the case of fiction, intuitively worked out, stands on what has gone before, and grows out of it. I feel that at any stage of my literary career it could have been said that the last book contained all the others.
V. S. Naipaul

Emerson was the chief figure in the American transcendental movement, a fact that complicates all accounts of him in literary or cultural history.
Howard Mumford Jones

Ever since my youth it has disturbed me that of the literary works that survived their own epoch, so many dealt with historical rather than contemporary subjects.
Lion Feuchtwanger

Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one.
W. H. Auden

Every literary critic believes he will outwit history and have the last word.
Mason Cooley

Excessive literary production is a social offense.
George Eliot

First literature came to refer only to itself, the literary theory.
Mason Cooley

First would be the literary side, then the spiritual and philosophical. The political side is required principally because of the necessity of the current Russian position.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

For several centuries what has passed for song in literary circles was any text that looked like the lyrics for a commonplace melodic setting.
David Antin

For the last half of my life I have had the doubtful benefit of a brother whose literary reputation is much greater than my own.
Laurence Housman

For this reason, to study English literature without some general knowledge of the relation of the Bible to that literature would be to leave one's literary education very incomplete.
Lafcadio Hearn

Genre is a bookstore problem, not a literary problem.
Rick Moody

Hell hath no fury like a hustler with a literary agent.
Frank Sinatra

How dare anyone, parent, schoolteacher, or merely literary critic, tell me not to act colored.
Arna Bontemps

Humorists can never start to take themselves seriously. It's literary suicide.
Erma Bombeck

I am in the Master of Professional Writing program teaching Humor Writing, Literary and Dramatic.
Shelley Berman

I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and Fries.
Stephen King

I believe my publisher has shown a great deal of faith in me over a lot of years but I'm not prepared to be so arrogant to say that the long-term literary value of my work would compensate them for a financial failure.
Andrew Vachss

I couldn't speak Japanese very well, passport regulations were changing, I felt British, and my future was in Britain. And it would also make me eligible for literary awards. But I still think I'm regarded as one of their own in Japan.
Kazuo Ishiguro

I did not have a very literary background. I came to poetry from the sciences and mathematics, and also through an interest in Japanese and Chinese poetry in translation.
Robert Morgan

I did not win and in fact I was called into the principal's office for a consultation with my parents. But that was the beginning of my literary career.
William Joyce

I dislike literary jargon and never use it. Criticism has only one function and that is to help readers read and understand literature. It is not a science, it is an aid to art.
Anne Stevenson

I don't believe in myths of decline or myths of progress, even as regards the literary scene.
Harold Bloom

I don't have traceable literary models because I haven't had great literary influences in my life.
Manuel Puig

I don't mean that literary fiction is better than genre fiction, On the contrary; novels can perform two functions and most perform only one.
Mark Haddon

I don't want to promote my own image either. I don't like going on television or mixing in literary circles.
Antonio Tabucchi

I get sent a lot of scripts which feature him as a kind of all-purpose Victorian literary character and really understand little, if anything, about him, his life or his books.
Simon Callow

I guess the two Manifesto, Communicating Vessels, Mad Love, and some of his poetry made a significant mark on me but as far as bringing a literary element into the music I see it as a much broader assimilation.
Trevor Dunn

I have always loved reading, so was interested in the literary world, and took many literary portraits.
Fay Godwin

I have been told by a member of the board of one of Canada's most prominent literary magazines that a submission of mine once caused a great deal of controversy.
John Barton

I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.
George Eliot

I might have simply settled down into an armchair literary life. I really don't know exactly why I didn't.
Edward Carpenter

I never appreciated 'positive heroes' in literature. They are almost always cliches, copies of copies, until the model is exhausted. I prefer perplexity, doubt, uncertainty, not just because it provides a more 'productive' literary raw material, but because that is the way we humans really are.
Jose Saramago

I read a book a day when I was a kid. My family was not literary; we did not have any books in the house.
Amy Tan

I spent the first twenty years of my writing career preparing for the mystery genre, which is my favorite literary form.
Sue Grafton

I think it comes from really liking literary forms. Poetry is very beautiful, but the space on the page can be as affecting as where the text is. Like when Miles Davis doesn't play, it has a poignancy to it.
Jim Jarmusch

I think that there are empty ecological niches in the literary landscape crying to be filled and when a book more or less fills a niche it's seized on, even when it's a far from perfect fit.
Edmund White

I use the language I use to my friends. They wouldn't believe me if I used some high-flown literary language. I want them to believe me.
Adrian Mitchell

I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. My family was not nationally known as being a literary family, though my mother and my mother's side of the family in general were interested in literature.
Kenneth Koch

I was editor of my high school literary magazine and a reporter for the school newspaper.
Jeffery Deaver

I wonder what it means about American literary culture and its transmission when I consider the number of American poets who earn their living teaching creative writing in universities. I've ended up doing that myself.
Marilyn Hacker

I would say that there is no future for literary studies as such in the United States.
Harold Bloom

I would solve a lot of literary problems just thinking about a character in the subway, where you can't do anything anyway.
Toni Morrison

I wrote for a weekly magazine and then edited a literary magazine, but I did not really feel comfortable with the profession of journalism itself.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante

I'm not against asking the audience to work, but I think what you have now is a sort of gratuitous deconstruction as a result of a fashion of literary deconstructionism indicating that there are no meanings.
Jonathan Miller

I've been an inveterate reader of literary magazines since I was a teenager. There are always discoveries. You're sitting in your easy chair, reading; you realize you've read a story or a group of poems four times, and you know, Yes, I want to go farther with this writer.
Marilyn Hacker

If a literary man puts together two words about music, one of them will be wrong.
Aaron Copland

If any imagine from the literary tone of the preceding remarks that we are indifferent to the radical movement for the benefit of the masses which is the crowning glory of the nineteenth century, they will soon discover their egregious mistake.
George Ripley

If Art relates itself to an Object, it becomes descriptive, divisionist, literary.
Robert Delaunay

In England, literary pretence is more universal than elsewhere from our method of education.
James Payn

It became plain very soon after our marriage that ours was to be a literary partnership.
Mary A. Ward

It is the growth of advertising in this country which, more than any single element, has brought the American magazine to its present enviable position in points of literary, illustrative and mechanical excellence.
Edward Bok

It must inquire not merely about the circumstances of the time in general, but in particular about the writer's position with regard to these things, the interests and motives, the leading ideas of his literary activity.
Ferdinand Christian Baur

It took me fifty years to deal with the Holocaust at all. And I did it in a literary way.
Leonard Baskin

It was less a literary thing than a linguistic, philosophical preoccupation... discovering how far you can go with language to create immediate, elementary experience.
Robert Morgan

It's too bad for us 'literary' enthusiasts, but it's the truth nevertheless - pictures tell any story more effectively than words.
William Moulton Marston

Let your literary compositions be kept from the public eye for nine years at least.
Horace

Liberty is the possibility of doubting, the possibility of making a mistake, the possibility of searching and experimenting, the possibility of saying No to any authority - literary, artistic, philosophic, religious, social and even political.
Ignazio Silone

Literary critics, however, frequently suffer from a curious belief that every author longs to extend the boundaries of literary art, wants to explore new dimensions of the human spirit, and if he doesn't, he should be ashamed of himself.
Robertson Davies

Literary fiction, as a strict genre, is all but dead. Meanwhile, most genres flourish.
Dean Koontz

Literary imagination is an aesthetic object offered by a writer to a lover of books.
Gaston Bachelard

Maybe when I'm sixty-five I'll talk about my literary life.
Rick Moody

Me, my literary reputation is mostly abroad, but I am anchored here in New York. I can't think of any other place I'd rather die than here.
Harold Brodkey

Movie SF is, by definition, dumbed down - there have only been three or four SF movies in the history of film that aspire to the complexity of literary SF.
Dan Simmons

Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much cherished aspect of academic freedom.
John Kenneth Galbraith

My literary success meant nothing to me.
Taylor Caldwell

No one in my family was a reader of literary fiction. So, I didn't have encouragement, but I didn't have discouragement, because I don't think anybody knew what that meant.
Amy Tan

Nothing leads so straight to futility as literary ambitions without systematic knowledge.
H. G. Wells

Of all the species of literary composition, perhaps biography is the most delightful. The attention concentrated on one individual gives a unity to the materials of which it is composed, which is wanting in general history.
Robert Hall

Once more I can climb about and remind you that a woman in this epoch does the important literary thinking.
Gertrude Stein

One effect that the Nobel Prize seems to have had is that more Arabic literary works have been translated into other languages.
Naguib Mahfouz

It is the growth of advertising in this country which, more than any single element, has brought the American magazine to its present enviable position in points of literary, illustrative and mechanical excellence.
Edward Bok

It must inquire not merely about the circumstances of the time in general, but in particular about the writer's position with regard to these things, the interests and motives, the leading ideas of his literary activity.
Ferdinand Christian Baur

It took me fifty years to deal with the Holocaust at all. And I did it in a literary way.
Leonard Baskin

It was less a literary thing than a linguistic, philosophical preoccupation... discovering how far you can go with language to create immediate, elementary experience.
Robert Morgan

It's too bad for us 'literary' enthusiasts, but it's the truth nevertheless - pictures tell any story more effectively than words.
William Moulton Marston

Let your literary compositions be kept from the public eye for nine years at least.
Horace

Liberty is the possibility of doubting, the possibility of making a mistake, the possibility of searching and experimenting, the possibility of saying No to any authority - literary, artistic, philosophic, religious, social and even political.
Ignazio Silone

Literary critics, however, frequently suffer from a curious belief that every author longs to extend the boundaries of literary art, wants to explore new dimensions of the human spirit, and if he doesn't, he should be ashamed of himself.
Robertson Davies

Literary fiction, as a strict genre, is all but dead. Meanwhile, most genres flourish.
Dean Koontz

Literary imagination is an aesthetic object offered by a writer to a lover of books.
Gaston Bachelard

Maybe when I'm sixty-five I'll talk about my literary life.
Rick Moody

Me, my literary reputation is mostly abroad, but I am anchored here in New York. I can't think of any other place I'd rather die than here.
Harold Brodkey

Movie SF is, by definition, dumbed down - there have only been three or four SF movies in the history of film that aspire to the complexity of literary SF.
Dan Simmons

Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much cherished aspect of academic freedom.
John Kenneth Galbraith

My literary success meant nothing to me.
Taylor Caldwell

No one in my family was a reader of literary fiction. So, I didn't have encouragement, but I didn't have discouragement, because I don't think anybody knew what that meant.
Amy Tan

Nothing leads so straight to futility as literary ambitions without systematic knowledge.
H. G. Wells

Of all the species of literary composition, perhaps biography is the most delightful. The attention concentrated on one individual gives a unity to the materials of which it is composed, which is wanting in general history.
Robert Hall

Once more I can climb about and remind you that a woman in this epoch does the important literary thinking.
Gertrude Stein

One effect that the Nobel Prize seems to have had is that more Arabic literary works have been translated into other languages.
Naguib Mahfouz

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

One of the best known, and one of the least intelligible, facts of literary history is the lateness, in Western European Literature at any rate, of prose fiction, and the comparative absence, in the two great classical languages, of what we call by that name.
George Saintsbury

One of the biggest changes that ever occurred in my life was going from the isolation of working part-time as a house painter in Henderson County, to Cornell, where everybody was a literary person.
Robert Morgan

One of the most beautiful passages of Rousseau is that in the sixth book of Confessions, where he describes the awakening in him of the literary sense. Of such wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for its own sake, has most.
Walter Pater

One would think that in writing about literary men and matters there would be no difficulty in finding a title for one's essay, or that any embarrassment which might arise would be from excess of material. I find this, however, far from being the case.
James Payn

People aren't quite sure what it means when a book is a Booker Prize winner. They're not quite sure what is being recommended, what literary values it stands for, because every year it stands for something different.
Kazuo Ishiguro

People aren't used to thinking of cultural forms spreading out across the full range of formal interactions - or what is called the "text" in literary terms.
Tony Conrad

Plato wove historical fact into literary myth.
Michael Shermer

Poetry seems to have been eliminated as a literary genre, and installed instead, as a kind of spiritual aerobic exercise - nobody need read it, but anybody can do it.
Marilyn Hacker

Politics in a literary work, is like a gun shot in the middle of a concert, something vulgar, and however, something which is impossible to ignore.
Stendhal

Probably induced by the asthma, I started reading and writing early on, my literary efforts from the age of about nine running chiefly to poetry and plays.
Patrick White

Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die.
Voltaire

Science fiction, outside of poetry, is the only literary field which has no limits, no parameters whatsoever.
Theodore Sturgeon

Sex in a woman's world has the same currency a penny has in a man's. Every penny saved is a penny earned in one world and in the next every sexual adventure is a literary experience.
Harry Golden

Since it is impossible to know what's really happening, we Peruvians lie, invent, dream and take refuge in illusion. Because of these strange circumstances, Peruvian life, a life in which so few actually do read, has become literary.
Mario Vargas Llosa

So I'm not a Southern writer in the commonly held sense of the term, like Faulkner or Eudora Welty, who took the South for their entire literary environment and subject matter.
Donna Tartt

So much of literary sci-fi is about creating worlds that are rich and detailed and make sense at a social level. We'll create a world for people and then later present a narrative in that world.
James Cameron

Some Critics on the Hearth are not only good-natured, but have rather too high, or, if that is impossible, let us say too pronounced, an opinion of the abilities of their literary friends.
James Payn

Some literary types subscribe to the notion that being a writer like Salinger entitles a person to remain free of the standards that might apply to mere mortals.
Joyce Maynard

Sometimes there's a snobbery among literary types that these people don't really get it, but in a lot of ways they get it more than the literati. There's a culture in the background that they understand and know. They get that deeper level.
Irvine Welsh

That has always seemed to me one of the stranger aspects of literary fame: you prove your competence as a writer and an inventor of stories, and then people clamour for you to make speeches and tell them what you think about the world.
J. M. Coetzee

The aim of literary ambition is to demonstrate one's greatness of soul.
Mason Cooley

The best source for finding an agent is called Literary Agents of North America. It's a complete list of agents, not only by name and address, but by type of book they represent and by what their submission criteria are.
Sara Paretsky

The Bible was written in several languages, embraces many literary forms, and reflects cultures very different from our own. These are important considerations for properly understanding the Bible in its context.
Troy Perry

The book can produce an addiction as fierce as heroin or nicotine, forcing us to spend much of our lives, like junkies, in book shops and libraries, those literary counterparts to the opium den.
Phillip Adams

The critical method which denies literary modernity would appear - and even, in certain respects, would be - the most modern of critical movements.
Paul de Man

The face of nature and civilization in this our country is to a certain point a very sufficient literary field. But it will yield its secrets only to a really grasping imagination. To write well and worthily of American things one need even more than elsewhere to be a master.
Henry James

The first epics were intended for recitation; the literary epic is meant to be read.
Lascelles Abercrombie

The great break of my literary career was going to law school.
Scott Turow

The greater the conceptual significance of a literary product, the more it should be assumed that it is based on an idea that determines the whole, and that the deeper consciousness of the time to which it belongs is reflected in it.
Ferdinand Christian Baur

The grounding in natural sciences which I obtained in the course of my medical studies, including preliminary examinations in botany, zoology, physics, and chemistry, was to become decisive in determining the trend of my literary work.
Johannes Vilhelm Jensen

The intercourse between the Mediterranean and the North or between the Atlantic and Central Europe was never purely economic or political; it also meant the exchange of knowledge and ideas and the influence of social institutions and artistic and literary forms.
Christopher Dawson

The literary culture, if you examine it, the high literary culture is that which preserves the government and you know it's really the talk for those who have.
Kathy Acker

The more melancholy side of my literary personality is much in tune with BS Johnson's.
Jonathan Coe

The New Testament evinces its universal design in its very, style, which alone distinguishes it from all the literary productions of earlier and later times.
Philip Schaff

The novel is not so much a literary genre, but a literary space, like a sea that is filled by many rivers.
Jose Saramago

The one thing I would like more credit for is being part of a movement which involves recognising the importance of plot and asserting that books of literary worth could be written that had plots.
Scott Turow

The period that I could consider the most important in my literary work came about beginning with the Revolution, and in a certain way, developed as a consequence of the Revolution. But it was also a result of the counterrevolutionary coup of November 1975.
Jose Saramago

The point of literary criticism in anthropology is not to replace research, but to find out how it is that we are persuasive.
Clifford Geertz

The real literary editors have mostly been fired. Those that remain are all "bottom line" editors; everything depends on the money.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The thematic, psychological, and cultural concerns of a writer are more relevant than whatever literary mode he or she chooses to deal with in any given novel.
Norman Spinrad

The thriller is the most popular literary genre of the 20th century.
Ken Follett

The world gets older, without getting either better or worse and so does literature. But I do think that the drab current phenomenon that passes for literary studies in the university will finally provide its own corrective.
Harold Bloom

There are two methods for the literary study of any book - the first being the study of its thought and emotion; the second only that of its workmanship. A student of literature should study some of the Bible from both points of view.
Lafcadio Hearn

There can be no literary equivalent to truth.
Laura Riding

There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.
Thomas Carlyle

There is an incompatibility between literary creation and political activity.
Mario Vargas Llosa

There is far too much literary criticism of the wrong kind. That is why I never could have survived as an academic.
Anne Stevenson

There might be a different model for a literary community that's quicker, more real-time, and involves more spontaneity.
George Saunders

These were all middle-class kids from literary backgrounds, joining this sort of train going by, this pop train, jumping on. Whereas the rest of the rock scene, you'll find that there's mostly working-class people.
Kevin Ayers

They are the literary equivalent of sequins on an evening dress.
Stefan Kanfer

They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, 'Can he name a kitten?'
Samuel Butler

To understand a literary style, consider what it omits.
Mason Cooley

Today, there are more opportunities for writers in terms of access to larger success, but it's more difficult to publish a literary novel in the lower ranges. In other words, you almost have to hit a home run. You can hit a triple, maybe, but nobody's interested in a single.
James Lee Burke

Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony.
Charles Baudelaire

We had literary references, so we knew what we were talking about. We could quote things, talk about books we'd read; you can say something, you don't have to explain it.
Kevin Ayers

We now open our mail with gloves and mask, though I can't imagine why anyone would target a literary agency!
Richard Curtis

We served on the editorial board of a literary monthly called Face in 1968 and 1969. He was a young writer, and I was also interested in broad cultural issues. We agreed on all major issues and became friends.
Vaclav Klaus

When authors who write literary fiction begin to write screenplays, everybody assumes that's the end. Here's another who's never going to write well again.
Richard Russo

When I became more involved in music, I had to give up some of my writing in the literary sense. However, on occasion, I would write something for my own pleasure or I would write notes and introductory remarks in the songbooks I put together.
Tom Glazer

When I put together a graphic novel, I don't think about literary prose. I think about storytelling.
Ted Rall

When I was in college, I was the editor of the literary magazine and insisted neither the editors nor the writers be specifically identified-only our student numbers appeared on the title page. I love that idea and still do.
Jonathan Carroll

When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.
Anais Nin

Wisdom finds its literary expression in wisdom literature.
Paul Ricoeur

You don't have to know people personally for them to be role models. Some of my most important role models were historical or literary figures that I only read about - never actually met.
John Wilson

You have to remember that I was a bright but simple fellow from Canada who seldom, if ever, met another writer, and then only a so-called literary type that occasionally sold a story and meanwhile worked in an office for a living.
A. E. van Vogt

You have to remember that in addition to running a literary agency, I am also an ebook publisher.
Richard Curtis

Business Quotes

A budget tells us what we can't afford, but it doesn't keep us from buying it.
William Feather

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.
Henry Ford

A cardinal principle of Total Quality escapes too many managers: you cannot continuously improve interdependent systems and processes until you progressively perfect interdependent, interpersonal relationships.
Stephen Covey

About the time we can make the ends meet, somebody moves the ends.
Herbert Hoover


Airline travel is hours of boredom interrupted by moments of stark terror.
Al Boliska

All lasting business is built on friendship.
Alfred A. Montapert

Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing... layout, processes, and procedures.
Tom Peters

An advertising agency is 85 percent confusion and 15 percent commission.
Fred Allen

An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today.
Laurence J. Peter

An economist's guess is liable to be as good as anybody else's.
Will Rogers

And while the law of competition may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department.
Andrew Carnegie

Anyone who has lost track of time when using a computer knows the propensity to dream, the urge to make dreams come true and the tendency to miss lunch.
Tim Berners-Lee

As a small businessperson, you have no greater leverage than the truth.
John Greenleaf Whittier

Ask five economists and you'll get five different answers - six if one went to Harvard.
Edgar R. Fiedler

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.
Thomas Carlyle

Business is a combination of war and sport.
Andre Maurois

Business, more than any other occupation, is a continual dealing with the future; it is a continual calculation, an instinctive exercise in foresight.
Henry R. Luce

Business, that's easily defined - it's other people's money.
Peter Drucker

By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.
Robert Frost

Cannibals prefer those who have no spines.
Stanislaw Lem

Carpe per diem - seize the check.
Robin Williams

Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.
Ambrose Bierce

Definition of a Statistician: A man who believes figures don't lie, but admits than under analysis some of them won't stand up either.
Evan Esar

Definition of Statistics: The science of producing unreliable facts from reliable figures.
Evan Esar

Do more than is required. What is the distance between someone who achieves their goals consistently and those who spend their lives and careers merely following? The extra mile.
Gary Ryan Blair

Do not trust people. They are capable of greatness.
Stanislaw Lem

Don't gamble; take all your savings and buy some good stock and hold it till it goes up, then sell it. If it don't go up, don't buy it.
Will Rogers

Don't let your ego get too close to your position, so that if your position gets shot down, your ego doesn't go with it.
Colin Powell

Don't simply retire from something; have something to retire to.
Harry Emerson Fosdick

Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.
Howard Aiken

Economic depression cannot be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement. Economic wounds must be healed by the action of the cells of the economic body - the producers and consumers themselves.
Herbert Hoover

Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.
Stephen Covey

Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.
Napoleon Hill

Employees make the best dates. You don't have to pick them up and they're always tax-deductible.
Andy Warhol

Every day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work.
Robert Orben

Every few seconds it changes - up an eighth, down an eighth -it's like playing a slot machine. I lose $20 million, I gain $20 million.
Ted Turner

Every young man would do well to remember that all successful business stands on the foundation of morality.
Henry Ward Beecher

Failure doesn't mean you are a failure it just means you haven't succeeded yet.
Robert H. Schuller

For a lot of people, the weekly paycheck is "take-home pay" because home is the only place they can afford to go with it.
Charles A. Jaffe

Government in the U.S. today is a senior partner in every business in the country.
Norman Cousins

Happiness does not come from doing easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best.
Theodore Isaac Rubin

He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money.
Benjamin Franklin

He who lives by the crystal ball soon learns to eat ground glass.
Edgar R. Fiedler

Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something.
Thomas A. Edison

High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation.
Charles Kettering

I am certainly not one of those who need to be prodded. In fact, if anything, I am the prod.
Winston Churchill

I buy when other people are selling.
J. Paul Getty

I don't think meals have any business being deductible. I'm for separation of calories and corporations.
Ralph Nader

I find it rather easy to portray a businessman. Being bland, rather cruel and incompetent comes naturally to me.
John Cleese

I get to play golf for a living. What more can you ask for - getting paid for doing what you love.
Tiger Woods

I rate enthusiasm even above professional skill.
Edward Appleton

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.
Henry David Thoreau

I want to put a ding in the universe.
Steve Jobs

I was told to avoid the business all together because of the rejection. People would say to me, 'Don't you want to have a normal job and a normal family?' I guess that would be good advice for some people, but I wanted to act.
Jennifer Aniston

I'm not a driven businessman, but a driven artist. I never think about money. Beautiful things make money.
Lord Acton

If all the economists were laid end to end, they'd never reach a conclusion.
George Bernard Shaw

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

If the career you have chosen has some unexpected inconvenience, console yourself by reflecting that no career is without them.
Jane Fonda

If there is anything that a man can do well, I say let him do it. Give him a chance.
Abraham Lincoln

If you aren't playing well, the game isn't as much fun. When that happens I tell myself just to go out and play as I did when I was a kid.
Thomas J. Watson

If you can build a business up big enough, it's respectable.
Will Rogers

If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars.
J. Paul Getty

If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work.
Kahlil Gibran

If you don't drive your business, you will be driven out of business.
B. C. Forbes

If you have to forecast, forecast often.
Edgar R. Fiedler

If you listen to your fears, you will die never knowing what a great person you might have been.
Robert H. Schuller

If you make a living, if you earn your own money, you're free - however free one can be on this planet.
Theodore White

If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem.
J. Paul Getty

In modern business it is not the crook who is to be feared most, it is the honest man who doesn't know what he is doing.
William Wordsworth

In the business world, everyone is paid in two coins: cash and experience. Take the experience first; the cash will come later.
Harold S. Geneen

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.
Benjamin Franklin

Informed decision-making comes from a long tradition of guessing and then blaming others for inadequate results.
Scott Adams

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.
Steve Jobs

Inside every working anarchy, there's an Old Boy Network.
Mitchell Kapor

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.
Adam Smith

It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
Mark Twain

It's called a pen. It's like a printer, hooked straight to my brain.
Dale Dauten

It's easy to make a buck. It's a lot tougher to make a difference.
Tom Brokaw

It's not what you pay a man, but what he costs you that counts.
Will Rogers

It's not your salary that makes you rich, it's your spending habits.
Charles A. Jaffe

Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.
Thomas A. Edison

Like dogs in a wheel, birds in a cage, or squirrels in a chain, ambitious men still climb and climb, with great labor, and incessant anxiety, but never reach the top.
Robert Browning

Look at growth, look at how much time people spend on the Net and look at the variety of things that they are doing. It's all really good, so I am actually encouraged by the fundamentals that underlie usage growth on the Net.
Meg Whitman

Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.
Dale Carnegie

Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.
Peter Drucker

My son is now an "entrepreneur." That's what you're called when you don't have a job.
Ted Turner

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
Abraham Lincoln

No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution.
Niccolo Machiavelli

Not for nothing is their motto TGIF - 'Thank God It's Friday.' They live for the weekends, when they can go do what they really want to do.
Richard Nelson Bolles

Nothing interferes with my concentration. You could put on an orgy in my office and I wouldn't look up. Well, maybe once.
Isaac Asimov

Nothing so conclusively proves a man's ability to lead others as what he does from day to day to lead himself.
Thomas J. Watson

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.
Henry Ford

One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.
Arnold H. Glasow

One of the true tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.
Arnold H. Glasow

One's mind has a way of making itself up in the background, and it suddenly becomes clear what one means to do.
A. C. Benson

Only a monopolist could study a business and ruin it by giving away products.
Scott McNealy

Our favorite holding period is forever.
Warren Buffett

Our work is the presentation of our capabilities.
Edward Gibbon

People will buy anything that is 'one to a customer.'
Sinclair Lewis

Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.
Colin Powell

Profit in business comes from repeat customers, customers that boast about your project or service, and that bring friends with them.
W. Edwards Deming

Punctuality is one of the cardinal business virtues: always insist on it in your subordinates.
Don Marquis

Real riches are the riches possessed inside.
B. C. Forbes

Reason and judgment are the qualities of a leader.
Tacitus

Regard it as just as desirable to build a chicken house as to build a cathedral.
Frank Lloyd Wright

Remind people that profit is the difference between revenue and expense. This makes you look smart.
Scott Adams

So little done, so much to do.
Cecil Rhodes

Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.
Steve Jobs

Sooner or later, those who win are those who think they can.
Paul Tournier

Stock prices have been quoted in fractions for two centuries, based on a system descended from Spanish pieces of eight. Each dollar was cut into eight bits worth 12.5 cents each.
Charles A. Jaffe

Success or failure in business is caused more by the mental attitude even than by mental capacities.
Walter Scott

The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.
Arthur C. Clarke

The buck stops with the guy who signs the checks.
Rupert Murdoch

The fastest way to succeed is to look as if you're playing by somebody else's rules, while quietly playing by your own.
Michael Korda

The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.
Walter Lippmann

The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.
Max de Pree

The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
Ambrose Bierce

The genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully.
Walter Lippmann

The great leaders are like the best conductors - they reach beyond the notes to reach the magic in the players.
Blaine Lee

The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.
Albert Einstein

The herd instinct among forecasters makes sheep look like independent thinkers.
Edgar R. Fiedler

The incestuous relationship between government and big business thrives in the dark.
Jack Anderson

The invisible hand of the market always moves faster and better than the heavy hand of government.
Mitt Romney

The leader who exercises power with honor will work from the inside out, starting with himself.
Blaine Lee

The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.
Napoleon Hill

The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.
Henry Ford

The meek shall inherit the Earth, but not its mineral rights.
J. Paul Getty

The most important quality in a leader is that of being acknowledged as such. All leaders whose fitness is questioned are clearly lacking in force.
Andre Maurois

The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows.
Aristotle Onassis

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.
Confucius

The way to get things done is not to mind who gets the credit for doing them.
Benjamin Jowett

The wheel that squeaks the loudest is the one that gets the grease.
Josh Billings

The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.
Thomas Carlyle

The work of the individual still remains the spark that moves mankind ahead even more than teamwork.
Igor Sikorsky

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.
Colin Powell

There are two kinds of companies, those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second.
Jeff Bezos

There is no time for cut-and-dried monotony. There is time for work. And time for love. That leaves no other time!
Coco Chanel

There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.
Sam Walton

There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted, but now it happens to everybody.
Adlai E. Stevenson

Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.
Peter Drucker

To command is to serve, nothing more and nothing less.
Andre Malraux

To think that the new economy is over is like somebody in London in 1830 saying the entire industrial revolution is over because some textile manufacturers in Manchester went broke.
Alvin Toffler

Try, try, try, and keep on trying is the rule that must be followed to become an expert in anything.
W. Clement Stone

We don't have a monopoly. We have market share. There's a difference.
Steve Ballmer

We succeed in enterprises which demand the positive qualities we possess, but we excel in those which can also make use of our defects.
Alexis de Tocqueville

Web users ultimately want to get at data quickly and easily. They don't care as much about attractive sites and pretty design.
Tim Berners-Lee

Whales only get harpooned when they come to the surface, and turtles can only move forward when they stick their neck out, but investors face risk no matter what they do.
Charles A. Jaffe

What we actually learn, from any given set of circumstances, determines whether we become increasingly powerless or more powerful.
Blaine Lee

What we've gone through in the last several years has caused some people to question 'Can we trust Microsoft?'
Steve Ballmer

What's the subject of life - to get rich? All of those fellows out there getting rich could be dancing around the real subject of life.
Paul A. Volcker

When in doubt, mumble; when in trouble, delegate; when in charge, ponder.
James H. Boren

Whenever an individual or a business decides that success has been attained, progress stops.
Thomas J. Watson

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Mark Twain

Wise are those who learn that the bottom line doesn't always have to be their top priority.
William Arthur Ward

You are educated. Your certification is in your degree. You may think of it as the ticket to the good life. Let me ask you to think of an alternative. Think of it as your ticket to change the world.
Tom Brokaw

You can't operate a company by fear, because the way to eliminate fear is to avoid criticism. And the way to avoid criticism is to do nothing.
Steve Ross

Be Yourself

"Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else."
Judy Garland


"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
Mark Twain


"Every one of us has in him a continent of undiscovered character. Blessed is he who acts the Columbus to his own soul."
Unknown


"It is possible at any age to discover a lifelong desire you never knew you had."
Robert Brault


"Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it."
Buddha


"Try to discover
The road to success
And you'll seek but never find,
But blaze your own path
And the road to success
Will trail right behind."
Robert Brault


" If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise. "
Johann von Goethe


"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."
e.e. cummings



"He who trims himself to suit everyone will soon whittle himself away."
Raymond Hull


"I think of life itself now as a wonderful play that I've written for myself, and so my purpose is to have the utmost fun playing my part."
Shirley MacLaine


"Wherever you go, go with all your heart."
Confucius


"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."
Dr. Seuss

Funny Quotes

A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
Mark Twain

A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
Emo Philips

A fast word about oral contraception. I asked a girl to go to bed with me and she said 'no'.
Woody Allen

A good sermon should be like a woman's skirt: short enough to rouse the interest, but long enough to cover the essentials.
Ronald Knox


A hard man is good to find.
Mae West

A man can be short and dumpy and getting bald but if he has fire, women will like him.
Mae West

A man in love is incomplete until he has married. Then he's finished.
Zsa Zsa Gabor

A man in the house is worth two in the street.
Mae West

A man's only as old as the woman he feels.
Groucho Marx

A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it is written on.
Sam Goldwyn

A woman drove me to drink, and I never even had the courtesy to thank her.
W.C. Fields

A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.
Rudyard Kipling

Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue.
Dilbert

Acting is all about honesty. If you can fake that, you've got it made.
George Burns

Ah, beer, my one weakness. My achilles heel, if you will.
Homer Simpson

Ah, good ol' trustworthy beer. My love for you will never die.
Homer Simpson

All animals are equal but some are more equal than others.
George Orwell

All the things I really like are either immoral, illegal or fattening.
Alexander Woollcott

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.
Oscar Wilde

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.
Mark Twain

Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed.
Winston Churchill

Always do right - this will gratify some and astonish the rest.
Mark Twain

Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them so much.
Oscar Wilde

An orgasm a day keeps the doctor away.
Mae West

Another good thing about being poor is that when you are seventy your children will not have declared you legally insane in order to gain control of your estate.
Woody Allen

Another such victory, and we are undone.
Pyrrhus

Anyone who says he can see through women is missing a lot.
Groucho Marx

Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly.
Mae West

As the poet said, "Only God can make a tree" - probably because it's so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.
Woody Allen

Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no lies.
Oliver Goldsmith

Avoid employing unlucky people. Throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them.
David Brent

Bart, stop pestering Satan!
Marge Simpson

Bart, with $10,000, we'd be millionaires! We could buy all kinds of useful things like...love!
Homer Simpson

Basically my wife was immature. I'd be in my bath and she'd come in and sink my boats.
Woody Allen

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
Mark Twain

Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Benjamin Franklin

Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.
Mae West

Biologically speaking, if something bites you, it is more likely to be female.
Desmond Morris

But a lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.
George Bernard Shaw

By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll be happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.
Socrates

Children nowadays are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannise their teachers.
Socrates

Children really brighten up a household - they never turn the lights off.
Ralph Bus

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
Mark Twain

Communism is like prohibition, it's a good idea but it won't work.
Will Rogers

Contraceptives should be used on every conceivable occasion.
Spike Milligan

Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves.
Brendan Behan

Dancing: the vertical expression of a horizontal desire.
George Bernard Shaw

Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock.
Will Rogers

Do you know what it means to come home at night to a woman who'll give you a little love, a little affection, a little tenderness? It means you're in the wrong house.
George Burns

Don't knock masturbation. It's sex with someone I love.
Woody Allen

Don't have a cow, man.
Bart Simpson

Don't keep a man guessing too long - he's sure to find the answer somewhere else.
Mae West

Don't look now, but there's one too many in this room and I think it's you.
Groucho Marx

Don't marry a man to reform him - that's what reform schools are for.
Mae West

Don't talk to me about Naval tradition! It's nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash.
Winston Churchill

Don't think of death as an ending. Think of it as a really effective way of cutting down your expenses.
Woody Allen

Don't worry. Being eaten by a crocodile is just like going to sleep. In a giant blender.
Homer Simpson

Donuts. Is there anything they can't do?
Homer Simpson

Dublin University contains the cream of Ireland - rich and thick.
Samuel Beckett

Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
Oprah Winfrey

Eagles may soar high, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
John Benfield

Eat my shorts.
Bart Simpson

English - Who needs that? I'm never going to England!
Homer Simpson

Epitaph for a dead waiter - God finally caught his eye.
George S. Kaufman

Eternity is really long, especially near the end.
Woody Allen

Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
Will Rogers

Every man over forty is a scoundrel.
George Bernard Shaw

Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.
Charles D. Warner

Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else.
Will Rogers

Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes.
Oscar Wilde

First law on holes - when you're in one, stop digging.
Denis Healey

Football is all very well a good game for rough girls, but not for delicate boys.
Oscar Wilde

For a while we pondered whether to take a vacation or get a divorce. We decided that a trip to Bermuda is over in two weeks, but a divorce is something you always have.
Woody Allen

Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.
John F. Kennedy

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

Give a man a free hand and he'll try to put it all over you.
Mae West

Give me chastity and continence, but not yet!
Saint Augustine

Giving up smoking is easy. I've done it hundreds of times.
Author Unknown
Often erroneously attributed to Mark Twain.

Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere.
Mae West

Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
Will Rogers

'Goodness, what beautiful diamonds!' 'Goodness had nothing to do with it'.
Mae West

Having sex is like playing bridge. If you don't have a good partner, you'd better have a good hand.
Woody Allen

He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That clearly points to a political career.
George Bernard Shaw

He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot.
Groucho Marx

He who can does. He who cannot, teaches.
George Bernard Shaw

He who fights and runs away
May live to fight another day;
But he who is in battle slain
Can never rise and fight again.
Oliver Goldsmith

He who hesitates is a damned fool.
Mae West

He who hesitates is last.
Mae West

Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned.
George Bernard Shaw

Here's to alcohol: the source of, and answer to, all of life's problems.
Homer Simpson

He's the kind of man a woman would have to marry to get rid of.
Mae West

He's the kind of man who picks his friends - to pieces.
Mae West

His lack of education is more than compensated for by his keenly developed moral bankruptcy.
Woody Allen

His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.
Mae West

Home is the girl's prison and the woman's workhouse.
George Bernard Shaw

How can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter?
Woody Allen

I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early.
Charles Lamb

I always say, keep a diary and some day it'll keep you.
Mae West

I am a marvelous housekeeper. Every time I leave a man I keep his house.
Zsa Zsa Gabor

I am at two with nature.
Woody Allen

I am free of all prejudices. I hate everyone equally.
W.C. Fields

I am not a heavy drinker. I can sometimes go for hours without touching a drop.
Noel Coward

I blame my mother for my poor sex life. All she told me was 'the man goes on top and the woman underneath.' For three years my husband and I slept in bunk beds.
Joan Rivers

I didn't know he was dead; I thought he was British.
Woody Allen

I do not believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear.
Woody Allen

I don't know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they terrify me.
Duke of Wellington

I don't feel old - I don't feel anything until noon. Then it's time for my nap.
Bob Hope

I don't know a lot about politics, but I can recognise a good party man when I see one.
Mae West

I don't like myself, I'm crazy about myself.
Mae West

I don't think sex could ever be as rewarding as winning the World Cup. It's not that sex is not great; just that the World Cup is only every four years and sex is a lot more regular than that.
Ronaldo

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying.
Woody Allen

I drink therefore I am.
W.C. Fields

I exercise extreme self-control. I never drink anything stronger than gin before breakfast.
W. C. Fields

I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning that's as good as they're going to feel all day.
Frank Sinatra

I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.
Mae West

I had a terrible education. I attended a school for emotionally disturbed teachers.
Woody Allen

I have always felt a gift diamond shines so much better than one you buy for yourself.
Mae West

I have an intense desire to return to the womb. Anybody's.
Woody Allen

I have made an important discovery…that alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, produces all the effects of intoxication.
Oscar Wilde

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
Mark Twain

I have never taken any exercise, except sleeping and resting.
Mark Twain

I have nothing to declare except my genius.
Oscar Wilde

I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.
Winston Churchill

I have the body of an eighteen year old. I keep it in the fridge.
Spike Milligan

I just love Chinese food. My favourite dish is number 27.
Clement Atlee

I like a man who's good, but not too good - for the good die young, and I hate a dead one.
Mae West

I like children - fried.
W.C. Fields

I like my beer cold…my TV loud…and my homosexuals flaming.
Homer Simpson

I love being married. It's so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.
Rita Rudner

I love everything about you. Your lips, your eyes, your voice. The only thing I can't stand is you.
Groucho Marx

I love mankind. It's people I can't stand.
Charles Monroe Schultz

I never drink water, fish fuck in it.
W.C. Fields

I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception.
Groucho Marx

I never loved another person the way I loved myself.
Mae West

I never met a kid I liked.
W.C. Fields

I often take exercise. Why only yesterday I had breakfast in bed.
Oscar Wilde

I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.
Eleanor Roosevelt

I once sent a dozen of my friends a telegram saying 'flee at once - all is discovered.' They all left town immediately.
Mark Twain

I recently turned sixty. Practically a third of my life is over.
Woody Allen

I sold the memoirs of my sex life to a publisher - they are going to make a board game out of it.
Woody Allen

I think people should mate for life, like pigeons or Catholics.
Woody Allen

I thought I could see the light at the end of the tunnel, but it was just some b*stard with a torch, bringing me more work.
David Brent

I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.
Woody Allen

I used to be Snow White…but I drifted.
Mae West

I want to share something with you: The three little sentences that will get you through life. Number 1: Cover for me. Number 2: Oh, good idea, Boss! Number 3: It was like that when I got here.
Homer Simpson

I was married by a judge - I should have asked for a jury.
George Burns

I was raised in the Jewish tradition, taught never to marry a Gentile, women shave on Saturday and most especially never to shave a Gentile woman on Saturday.
Woody Allen

I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam: I looked into the soul of another boy.
Woody Allen

I'd call him a sadistic, hippophilic necrophile, but that would be beating a dead horse.
Woody Allen

I'd rather be a failure at something I love than a success at something I hate.
George Burns

If at first you don't succeed, remove all evidence you ever tried.
David Brent

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then give up. There's no sense being a damn fool about it.
W. C. Fields

If it sells, it's art.
Frank Lloyd

If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank.
Woody Allen

If only God would give me some sign. If He would just speak to me once, anything, one sentence, two words. If He would just cough.
Woody Allen

If there's one thing America needs, it's more lawyers.
Homer Simpson

If work was so good, the rich would have kept more of it for themselves.
David Brent

If you can keep your head when all around you have lost theirs, then you probably haven't understood the seriousness of the situation.
David Brent

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
Mark Twain

If you want to make God laugh, tell him your future plans.
Woody Allen

If you've got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.
John Wayne

If your boss is getting you down, look at him through the prongs of a fork and imagine him in jail.
David Brent

If you're gonna be late, then be late and not just 2 minutes - make it an hour and enjoy your breakfast.
David Brent

If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative.
Woody Allen

I'm astounded by people who want to 'know' the universe when it's hard enough to find your way around Chinatown.
Woody Allen

I'm at the age now where just putting my cigar in its holder is a thrill.
George Burns

I'm very pleased to be here. Let's face it, at my age I'm very pleased to be anywhere.
George Burns

I'm not a fighter, I have bad reflexes. I was once run over by a car being pushed by two guys.
Woody Allen

I'm not normally a religious man, but... if you're up there, save me, Superman!
Homer Simpson

I'm really a timid person - I was beaten up by Quakers.
Woody Allen

I'm tired, send one of them home.
Mae West
When told there were 10 men waiting to meet her in her dressing-room.

In 1969 I gave up women and alcohol and it was the worst 20 minutes of my life.
George Best

In California, they don't throw their garbage away - they make it into TV shows.
Woody Allen

In my house I'm the boss. My wife is just the decision maker.
Woody Allen

In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
Oscar Wilde

Income tax has made liars out of more Americans than golf.
Will Rogers

Intellectuals are like the mafia; they only kill their own.
Woody Allen

Interestingly, according to modern astronomers, space is finite. This is a very comforting thought - particularly for people who can never remember where they have left things.
Woody Allen

Is sex dirty? Only if it's done right.
Woody Allen

Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?
Mae West

Is there anything worn under the kilt? No, it's all in perfect working order.
Spike Milligan

It is always the best policy to tell the truth, unless of course you are an exceptionally good liar.
Jerome K. Jerome

It is impossible to travel faster than light, and certainly not desirable, as one's hat keeps blowing off.
Woody Allen

It is most unwise for people in love to marry.
George Bernard Shaw

It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about nowadays saying things against one, behind one's back, that are absolutely and entirely true.
Oscar Wilde

It is very easy to endure the difficulties of one's enemies. It is the successes of one's friends that are hard to bear.
Oscar Wilde

It takes only one drink to get me drunk. The trouble is, I can't remember if it's the thirteenth or the fourteenth.
George Burns

It's been so long since I've had sex I've forgotten who ties up whom.
Joan Rivers

It's better to be looked over than overlooked.
Mae West

It's not the men in my life that count, it's the life in my men.
Mae West

It's not the people who are in prison worry me. It's the people who aren't.
Arthur Gore

It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.
Mark Twain

It's not true I had nothing on. I had the radio on.
Marilyn Monroe
On posing nude for a calendar photograph.

It's not what I do, but the way I do it. It's not what I say, but the way I say it.
Mae West

It's hard for me to get used to these changing times. I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty.
George Burns

It's not our fault our generation has short attention spans, Dad. We watch an appalling amount of TV.
Lisa Simpson

It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens.
Woody Allen

It's the team that matters. Where would The Beatles be without Ringo? If John got Yoko to play drums the history of music would be completely different.
David Brent

It's worse than dog eats dog. It's dog doesn't return dog's phone calls.
Woody Allen

I've been looking for a girl like you - not you, but a girl like you.
Groucho Marx

I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it.
Groucho Marx

I've often said, the only thing standing between me and greatness is me.
Woody Allen

Know your limitations and be content with them. Too much ambition results in promotion to a job you can't do.
David Brent

Last week I stated this woman was the ugliest woman I had ever seen. I have since been visited by her sister and now wish to withdraw that statement.
Mark Twain

Let us all bask in television's warm glowing warming glow.
Homer Simpson

Life is divided up into the horrible and the miserable.
Woody Allen

Lisa, if you don't like your job you don't strike. You just go in every day, and do it really half-assed. That's the American way.
Homer Simpson

Love conquers all things except poverty and toothache.
Mae West

Love is temporary insanity curable by marriage.
Ambrose Bierce

Love is the answer, but while you are waiting for the answer sex raises some pretty good questions.
Woody Allen

Love may be blind, but it can sure find its way around in the dark!
Author Unknown

Male menopause is a lot more fun than female menopause. With female menopause you gain weight and get hot flashes. Male menopause - you get to date young girls and drive motorcycles.
Rita Rudner

Marge, I'm going to miss you so much. And it's not just the sex. It's also the food preparation.
Homer Simpson

Marriage is a great institution, but I'm not ready for an institution.
Mae West

Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.
George Bernard Shaw

Men are all alike - except the one you've met who's different.
Mae West

Men forget everything; women remember everything. That's why men need instant replays in sports. They've already forgotten what happened.
Rita Rudner

Men have higher body temperatures than women. If your heating goes out in winter, I recommend sleeping next to a man. Men are like portable heaters that snore.
Rita Rudner

Men like to barbecue. Men will cook if danger is involved.
Rita Rudner

Men who have pierced ears are better prepared for marriage. They've experienced pain and bought jewelry.
Rita Rudner

Men like women with a past because they hope history will repeat itself.
Mae West

Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
Groucho Marx

Money can't buy you happiness but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery.
Spike Milligan

Money couldn't buy friends, but you got a better class of enemy.
Spike Milligan

Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.
Woody Allen

More than any time in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
Woody Allen

Most of the time I don't have any fun. The rest of the time I don't have any fun at all.
Woody Allen

Mr. Right is coming. But he's in Africa and he's walking.
Oprah Winfrey

My ex-husband and I fell in love at first sight. Maybe I should have taken a second look.
Woody Allen

My father had a profound influence on me, he was a lunatic.
Spike Milligan

My feelings - as usual - we will slaughter them all.
Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf
On US soldiers attacking Baghdad.

My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing will begin in five minutes.
Ronald Reagan
US president during radio microphone test.

My luck is so bad that if I bought a cemetery, people would stop dying.
Ed Furgol

My mother loved children - she would have given anything if I had been one.
Groucho Marx

My name is Saddam Hussein. I am the president of Iraq, and I want to negotiate.
Saddam Hussein
To US troops who captured him in a hole in the ground near Tikrit.

My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.
Woody Allen

My parents stayed together for forty years. But that was out of spite.
Woody Allen

My wife and I tried to breakfast together, but we had to stop or our marriage would have been wrecked.
Winston Churchill

My wife has a slight impediment in her speech - every now and then she stops to breathe.
Jimmy Durante

My wife is a sex object - every time I ask for sex, she objects.
Les Dawson

My wife Mary and I have been married for forty-seven years and not once have we had an argument serious enough to consider divorce; murder, yes, but divorce, never.
Jack Benny

Never do today that which will become someone else's responsibility tomorrow.
David Brent

Never give a sucker an even break.
W. C. Fields

Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.
Winston Churchill

Never take life too seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway.
Author Unknown

No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.
Aristotle

Not one man in a beer commercial has a beer belly.
Rita Rudner

Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends.
Woody Allen

Nothing succeeds like excess.
Oscar Wilde

Now that women are jockeys, baseball umpires, atomic scientists, and business executives, maybe someday they can master parallel parking.
Bill Vaughan

Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most.
Mark Twain

Oh no, the dead have risen and they're voting Republican.
Lisa Simpson

Oh, Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz
My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.
Janis Joplin

Oh, now there's only one kind of love that lasts. That's unrequited love. It stays with you forever.
Woody Allen

Old age isn't so bad when you consider the alternatives.
Maurice Chevalier
On 77th birthday.

On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done just as easily lying down.
Woody Allen

Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four essential food groups: alcohol, caffeine, sugar and fat.
Alex Levine

Only one man in a thousand is a leader of men, the other 999 follow women.
Groucho Marx

Operator, give me the number for 911!
Homer Simpson

Paying alimony is like feeding hay to a dead horse.
Groucho Marx

Please accept my resignation. I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.
Groucho Marx

Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.
Oscar Wilde

Politics doesn't make strange bedfellows, marriage does.
Groucho Marx

Put the key of despair into the lock of apathy. Turn the knob of mediocrity slowly and open the gates of despondency - welcome to a day in the average office.
David Brent

Quitters never win, winners never quit. But those who never win and never quit are idiots.
David Brent

Rarely is the question asked: is our children learning.
George W Bush

Remember that age and treachery will always triumph over youth and ability.
David Brent

Remember the 3 golden rules: 1. It was like that when I got here. 2. I didn't do it. 3.
To your Boss I like your style.
David Brent

Remember, if you smoke after sex you're doing it too fast.
Woody Allen

Remember, it doesn't matter whether you win or lose; what matters is whether I win or lose.
Darrin Weinberg

Santa Claus has the right idea - visit people only once a year.
Victor Borge

Say what you want about long dresses, but they cover a multitude of shins.
Mae West

See what will happen if you don't stop biting your fingernails?
Will Rogers
To his niece on seeing the Venus de Milo.

Sex alleviates tension. Love causes it.
Woody Allen

Sex at age 90 is like trying to shoot pool with a rope.
George Burns

Sex is an emotion in motion.
Mae West

Sex is like having dinner: sometimes you joke about the dishes, sometimes you take the meal seriously.
Woody Allen

She got her good looks from her father. He's a plastic surgeon.
Groucho Marx

She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitchfork.
Oliver Goldsmith

She wore a short skirt and a tight sweater and her figure described a set of parabolas that could cause cardiac arrest in a yak.
Woody Allen

She's the kind of woman who climbed the ladder of success, wrong by wrong.
Mae West

Show me a good loser and I'll show you a LOSER!
David Brent

Sit down Rodney. Keep your brains warm.
Derek ‘Del boy’ Trotter

Some drink deeply from the river of knowledge. Others only gargle.
Woody Allen

Some guy hit my fender and I said "be fruitful and multiply" but not in those words.
Woody Allen

Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
Joseph Heller
In Catch-22.

Some people say there is a God; others say there is no God. The truth probably lies somewhere in between.
W.B. Yeats

Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I don't like that attitude. I can assure them it is much more serious than that.
Bill Shankly

Some things are better than sex, and some are worse, but there's nothing exactly like it.
W. C. Fields

Some weasel took the cork out of my lunch.
W. C. Fields

Son, a woman is like a beer. They smell good, they look good, you'd step over your own mother just to get one! But you can't stop at one. You wanna drink another woman!
Homer Simpson

Stop thinking, and end your problems.
Lao Tzu

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But I repeat myself.
Mark Twain

Television! Teacher, mother, secret lover.
Homer Simpson

Thank God I'm an atheist.
Luis Bunuel

That [sex] was the most fun I ever had without laughing.
Woody Allen

That's the Irish people all over - they treat a joke as a serious thing, and a serious thing as a joke.
Sean O'Casey

The Americans will always do the right thing . . . After they've exhausted all the alternatives.
Winston Churchill

The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet and Doctor Merryman.
Jonathan Swift

The best way to behave is to misbehave.
Mae West

The big difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money usually costs a lot less.
Brendan Behan

The Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in a garden…It ends with Revelations.
Oscar Wilde

The difference between sex and death is that with death you can do it alone and no one is going to make fun of you.
Woody Allen

The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
William Shakespeare

The husband who wants a happy marriage should learn to keep his mouth shut and his checkbook open.
Groucho Marx

The ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.
Voltaire

The light at the end of the tunnel is just the light of an oncoming train.
Robert Lowell

The male is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness and kindness, can be trained to do most things.
Jilly Cooper

The minute that you read something that you can't understand, you can almost be sure it was drawn up by a lawyer.
Will Rogers

The more I see of men, the more I like dogs.
Jeanne-Marie Roland

The more I see of the moneyed classes, the more I understand the guillotine.
George Bernard Shaw

The only difference between doctors and lawyers is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you, too.
Anton Chekhov

The Prime Minister has nothing to hide from the President of the United States.
Winston Churchill
Stepping from his bath in presence of President Roosevelt.

The realisation that one is to be hanged in the morning concentrates the mind wonderfully.
Samuel Johnson

The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.
Mark Twain

The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage.
Mark Russell

The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made.
Groucho Marx

The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly and lie about your age.
Lucille Ball

This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.
Oscar Wilde

There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true.
Winston Churchill

There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!
Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf

There are no good girls gone wrong - just bad girls found out.
Mae West

There are three ages of man - youth, age, and 'you're looking wonderful.'
Cardinal Francis Spellman

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.
Benjamin Disraeli

There are three stages of man: he believes in Santa Claus; he does not believe in Santa Claus; he is Santa Claus.
Bob Phillips

There are two types of people in this world: good and bad. The good sleep better, but the bad seem to enjoy the waking hours much more.
Woody Allen

There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?
Woody Allen

There is one way to find out if a man is honest - ask him. If he says yes, you know he is crooked.
Groucho Marx

There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad.
Salvador Dali

There is only one immutable law in life - in a gentleman's toilet, incoming traffic has the right of way.
Hugh Leonard

There ought to be one day-- just one-- when there is open season on senators.
Will Rogers

There will always be a battle between the sexes because men and women want different things. Men want women and women want men.
George Burns

There's no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary.
Brendan Behan

There's no such thing as a soul. It's just something they made up to scare kids, like the boogeyman or Michael Jackson.
Bart Simpson

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to but they do.
They fill up with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
Philip Larkin

They misunderestimated me.
George W Bush

Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others.
Groucho Marx

To err is human - but it feels divine.
Mae West

To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer.
Paul Ehrlich

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
Oscar Wilde

Too bad all the people who know how to run this country are busy running taxicabs or cutting hair.
George Burns

Too much of a good thing is wonderful.
Mae West

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.
Albert Einstein

Watching your daughter being collected by her date feels like handing over a million dollar Stradivarius to a gorilla.
Jim Bishop

We can't all be heroes because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.
Will Rogers

Well, all I know is what I read in the papers.
Will Rogers

What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea.
Mahatma Gandhi

What does a squirrel do in the summer? It buries nuts. Why? Cos then in winter time he's got something to eat and he won't die. So, collecting nuts in the summer is worthwhile work. Every task you do at work think, would a squirrel do that? Think squirrels. Think nuts.
David Brent

What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.
Woody Allen

What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream? Or what's worse, what if only that fat guy in the third row exists?
Woody Allen

What ought to be done to the man who invented the celebrating of anniversaries? Mere killing would be too light.
Mark Twain

What would men be without women? Scarce, sir, mighty scarce.
Mark Twain

What's the use of happiness? It can't buy you money.
Henny Youngman

When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more easily by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?
David Brent

When I came back to Dublin I was court marshaled in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.
Brendan Behan

When I die I want to decompose in a barrel of porter and have it served in all the pubs in Ireland.
J. P. Donleavy
In The Ginger Man.

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished by how much he'd learned in seven years.
Author Unknown
Often erroneously attributed to Mark Twain.

When I was born my mother was terribly disappointed. Not that she wanted a girl - she wanted a divorce.
Woody Allen

When I was young I used to think that money was the most important thing in life. Now that I am old, I know it is.
Oscar Wilde

When I'm good, I'm very, very good, but when I'm bad, I'm better.
Mae West

When the President does it, that means it's not illegal.
Richard Nixon

When women go wrong, men go right after them.
Mae West

When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity.
Albert Einstein

When you have nothing to say, say nothing.
Charles Caleb Colton

When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.
Winston Churchill

When you see a married couple coming down the street, the one who is two or three steps ahead is the one that's mad.
Helen Rowland

When you see what some women marry, you realise how they must hate to work for a living.
Helen Rowland

Whenever cannibals are on the brink of starvation, Heaven, in its infinite mercy, sends them a fat missionary.
Oscar Wilde

Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food: frequently there must be a beverage.
Woody Allen

Winning isn't everything - it's the only thing.
Vince Lombardi

Woe unto you also, lawyers! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne.
Jesus

Women are as old as they feel - and men are old when they lose their feelings.
Mae West

Women have a much better time than men in this world. There are far more things forbidden to them.
Oscar Wilde

Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.
Oscar Wilde

Women should be obscene and not heard.
Groucho Marx

Women take clothing much more seriously than men. I've never seen a man walk into a party and say "Oh, my God, I'm so embarrassed; get me out of here. There's another man wearing a black tuxedo." - Rita Rudner

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
Oscar Wilde

You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred.
Woody Allen

You can't say that civilization don't advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way.
Will Rogers

You don't have to be mad to work here, but you do have to be on time, well presented, a team player, customer service focused and sober!
David Brent

You have to be 100% behind someone, before you can stab them in the back.
David Brent

You just pick up a chord, go twang, and you're got music.
Sid Vicious

You tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is 'never try'.
Homer Simpson

You're everywhere. You're omnivorous.
Homer Simpson
To God.

You're never too old to become younger.
Mae West

Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life.
Herbert Henry Asquith

Friendship Quotes

Friends are the sunshine of life.
John Hay

A joy shared is a joy doubled.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Friendship is one mind in two bodies. Unknown Friends are the siblings God never gave us.
Mencius

A single rose can be my garden... a single friend, my world.
Leo Buscaglia


And a youth said, Speak to us of Friendship
And he answered saying:
Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.
For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.
Kahlil Gibran

Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends.
Virginia Woolf

The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.
William Blake

Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joys, and dividing our grief.
Joseph Addison

Life is slippery. Here, take my hand.
H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away.
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)

True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it be lost.
Charles Caleb Colton

The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him with his friendship.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Friendship isn't a big thing - it's a million little things.
Author Unknown

A faithful friend is the medicine of life.
The Bible, Ecclesiasticus 6. 16

What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.
Aristotle

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ah, how good it feels! The hand of an old friend.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

There are big ships and small ships. But the best ship of all is friendship.
Author Unknown

Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow.
Don't walk behind me, I may not lead.
Just walk beside me and be my friend.
Albert Camus

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.
William Shakespeare

Friendship's the wine of life.
Edward Young

I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.
I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, who has sight so keen and strong
That it can follow the flight of song?
Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

If you're alone, I'll be your shadow. If you want to cry, I'll be your shoulder. If you want a hug, I'll be your pillow. If you need to be happy, I'll be your smile. But anytime you need a friend, I'll just be me.
Author Unknown

I want to be your friend
For ever and ever without break or decay.
When the hills are all flat
And the rivers are all dry,
When it lightens and thunders in winter,
When it rains and snows in summer,
When Heaven and Earth mingle -
Not till then will I part from you.
Chinese 1st century AD, translated Arthur Waley

Friendship is not diminished by distance or time, by imprisonment or war, by suffering or silence. It is in these things that it roots most deeply.
Pam Brown

Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together.
Woodrow Wilson

Friendship is the golden thread that ties the heart of all the world.
John Evelyn

Make new friends, but keep the old;
Those are silver, these are gold.
New-made friendships, like new wine,
Age will mellow and refine.
Friendships that have stood the test -
Time and change - are surely best;
Brow may wrinkle, hair grow gray,
Friendship never knows decay.
For 'mid old friends, tried and true,
Once more we our youth renew.
But old friends, alas! may die,
New friends must their place supply.
Cherish friendship in your breast-
New is good, but old is best;
Make new friends, but keep the old;
Those are silver, these are gold.
Joseph Parry

We have been friends together
In sunshine and in shade.
Caroline Sheridan Norton

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art . . . It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.
C. S. Lewis

Friendship makes prosperity more brilliant, and lightens adversity by dividing and sharing it.
Cicero

There's nothing more precious in this world than the feeling of being wanted.
Diana Dors

Life is nothing without friendship.
Cicero

Love is like the wild rose-briar;
Friendship like the holly-tree.
The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms,
But which will bloom most constantly?
Emily Bronte

Hold a true friend with both your hands.
Nigerian Proverb

What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)

No man is useless while he has a friend.
Robert Louis Stevenson

Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.
Kahlil Gibran

One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives.
Euripides

Your friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you.
Elbert Hubbard

A true friend is one who overlooks your failures and tolerates your success.
Doug Larson

A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.
Walter Winchell

Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends
Mm, I get high with a little help from my friends
Mm, gonna try with a little help from my friends.
John Lennon and Paul McCartney

Love is rarer than genius itself. And friendship is rarer than love.
Charles Peguy

It's the friends you can call up at 4:00 a.m. that really matter.
Marlene Dietrich

A true friend unbosoms freely, advises justly, assists readily, adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and continues a friend unchangeably.
William Penn

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.
Anais Nin

Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody.
Henry David Thoreau

Friends, companions, lovers, are those who treat us in terms of our unlimited worth to ourselves. They are closest to us who best understand what life means to us, who feel for us as we feel for ourselves, who are bound to us in triumph and disaster, who break the spell of our loneliness.
Henry Alonzo Myers

Friendship, on the other hand, serves a great host of different purposes all at the same time. In whatever direction you turn, it still remains yours. No barrier can shut it out. It can never be untimely; it can never be in the way. We need friendship all the time, just as much as we need the proverbial prime necessities of life, fire and water.
Cicero

Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.
Mark Twain

I keep my friends as misers do their treasure, because, of all the things granted us by wisdom, none is greater or better than friendship.
Pietro Aretino

I love you not only for who you are, but for what you are when I am with you.
I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but what you are making of me.
I love you because you have done more than any creed could have done to make me good, and more than any fate could have done to make me happy.
You have done it without a touch, without a word, without a sign.
You have done it by being yourself. Perhaps that is what being a friend means, after all.
Roy Croft

I want someone to laugh with me, someone to be grave with me, someone to please me and help my discrimination with his or her own remark, and at times, no doubt, to admire my acuteness and penetration.
Robert Burns

It is that my friends have made the story of my life. In a thousand ways they have turned my limitations into beautiful privileges, and enabled me to walk serene and happy in the shadow cast by my deprivation.
Helen Keller

Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness of existence.
Sydney Smith

Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)

One who looks for a friend without faults will have none.
Hasidic Saying

Only your real friends will tell you when your face is dirty.
Sicilian Proverb

The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are right.
Mark Twain

There can be no Friendship where there is no Freedom. Friendship loves a free air, and will not be penned up in straight and narrow enclosures. It will speak freely, and act so too; and take nothing ill where no ill is meant; nay, where it is, 'twill easily forgive, and forget too, upon small acknowledgements.
Friends are true twins in soul; they sympathise in everything.
One is not happy without the other, nor can either of them be miserable alone. As if they could change bodies, they take in turns in pain as well as in pleasure; relieving one another in their most adverse conditions.
William Penn

There is nothing worth the wear of winning, but laughter and the love of friends.
Hillaire Belloc

True friends stab you in the front.
Oscar Wilde

Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labor.
For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe unto him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.
The Bible, Ecclesiastes 4. 9

Whatever you are it is your own friends who make your world.
William James

When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the 'nay' in your own mind, nor do you withhold the 'ay.
And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;
For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.
When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as
the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
Kahlil Gibran

I always felt that the great high privilege, relief and comfort of friendship was that one had to explain nothing.
Katherine Mansfield