Popular Quotations In English

There are no gains without pains – Adlai Stevenson

The soul of a murderer is blind – Albert Camus

Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land – Aldo Leopold

There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self – Aldous Huxley

A little learning is a dangerous thing – Alexander Pope

Literature becomes the living memory of a nation – Alexander Solzhenitsyn

A great writer is, so to speak, a second government in his country. And for that reason no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones – Alexander Solzhenitsyn

United we stand, divided we fall – Aesop

No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted – Aesop

It is easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them – Alfred Adler

War is not an adventure. It is a disease – Antoine De Saint-Exupery

To marry is to halve your rights and double your duties – Arthur Schopenhauer

Justice is truth in action – Benjamin Disraeli

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

No nation was ever ruined by trade – Benjamin Franklin

Success has ruined many a man – Benjamin Franklin

Time is money – Benjamin Franklin

There never was a good war or a bad peace – Benjamin Franklin

Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise – Benjamin Franklin

Laziness travels so slowly that poverty soon overtakes him – Benjamin Franklin

A single man is an incomplete animal. He resembles the odd half of a pair of scissors – Benjamin Franklin

Time ripens all things. No man is born wise – Cervantes

A pessimist is a person who has had to listen to too many optimists – Don Marquis

An optimist is a guy that never has had much experience – Don Marquis

Laws were made to be broken – Christopher North

A sign of a celebrity is often that his name is worth more than his services – Daniel J Boorstin

Childhood is the kingdom where no one dies – Edna St. Vincent Millay

Love means never having to say you’re sorry – Erich Segal

The first requisite to happiness is to be born in a famous city – Euripides

The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself – Franklin D. Roosevelt

The physical strength can never permanently withstand the impact of spiritual force – Franklin D. Roosevelt

The love of truth has its reward in heaven and even on earth – Friedrich Nietzsche

Hell is full of musical amateurs – George Bernard Shaw

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship – George Bernard Shaw

My way of joking is to tell the truth – George Bernard Shaw

A life spent in making mistakes is not only more honourable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing – George Bernard Shaw

Each flower is a soul opening out to nature – George De Nerval

The happiest woman, like the happiest nations, has no history – George Eliot

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others – George Orwell

Words are weapons, and it is dangerous to borrow them from the arsenal of the enemy – George Santayana

Our dignity is not in what we do but what we understand. The whole world is doing things – George Santayana

A rose is a rose is a rose – Gertrude Stein

Freud is the father of psychoanalysis. It has no mother – Germaine Greer

A man must commit a crime at least once in his life-time. Only then will his virtue be recognized – Girish Karnad

I call architecture frozen music – Goethe

I must govern the clock, not be governed by it – Golda Meir

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author – G K Chesterton

Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly – G K Chesterton

A man is a critic when he cannot be an artist; in the same way a man becomes an informer when he cannot be a soldier – Gustave Flaubert

If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen – Harry S Truman

The customer is always right – H Gordon Selfridge

Art is a jealous mistress – Henry James

Problems are only opportunities in work clothes – Henry J Kaiser

Music is the universal language of mankind – poetry their universal pastime and delight – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

You can’t step twice into the same river – Heraclitus

Education has for its object the formation of character – Herbert Spencer

Who has self-confidence will lead the rest – Horace

Diplomacy is to do and say the nastiest thing in the nicest way – Issac Goldberg

Democracy and socialism are means to an end, not the end itself – Jawaharlal Nehru

What is history, indeed, but a record of change? – Jawaharlal Nehru

Poverty anywhere is a danger to prosperity everywhere – Jawaharlal Nehru

Every man thinks God is on his side. The rich and powerful know he is – Jean Anouilh

Man was born free and everywhere he is in chains – Jean Jacques Rousseau

Once you hear the details of a victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat – Jean Paul Sartre

Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate – John F Kennedy

When written in Chinese, the word crisis is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity – John F Kennedy

A thing of beauty is a joy forever. Its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness – John Keats

Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies, for instance – John Ruskin

There is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather – John Ruskin

All good things which exist are the fruit of originality – John Stuart Mill

Cleanliness is indeed next to godliness – John Wesley

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another – Jonathan Swift

Vision is the art of seeing things invisible – Jonathan Swift

To be a leader you have got to lead human beings with affection – JRD Tata

From each according to his abilities, and to each according to his needs – Karl Marx

It takes twenty years or more of peace to make a man; it takes only twenty seconds of war to destroy him – King Baudouin I

What is food to one is to another bitter poison – Lucretius

I generally avoid temptation unless I can’t resist it – Mae West

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder – Margaret Hungerford

Dance is the hidden language of the soul – Martha Graham

Marriage, to tell the truth, is an evil, but it is a necessary evil – Menander

It (marriage) is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside desperate to get out – Montaigne

Men are all alike in their promises. It is only in their deeds that they differ – Moliere

Things are only worth what you make them worth – Moliere

I prefer an understanding vice to an obstinate virtue – Moliere

My diaries have always been my friends. The written word is so much more constant than human beings. Honest, too – Mrinal Pande

Being over seventy is like being engaged in a war. All our friends are going or gone and we survive amongst the dead and the dying as on a battlefield – Muriel Spark

A leader is a dealer in hope – Napoleon Bonaparte

You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements – Norman Douglasp>

The first blow is half the battle – Oliver Goldsmith

I love everything that’s old: old times, old manners, old books, old wines – Oliver Goldsmith

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well-written, or badly written – Oscar Wilde

A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies – Oscar Wilde

If the nose of the Cleopatra had been a little shorter, the whole face of the world would have been changed – Pascal

If winter comes, can spring be far behind? – Shelley

The wise want love; and those who love want wisdom – Shelley

No one is wise at all times – Pliny The Elder

Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable – Plato

I leave no trace of wings in the air but I am glad I had my flight – Rabindranath Tagore

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every hero becomes a bore at last – Ralph Waldo Emerson

A sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Reading all the good books is like a conversation with the finest men of past centuries – Rene Descartes

Reading is to mind what exercise is to the body – Richard Steele

To travel hopefully is better than to arrive – R L Stevenson

He travels fastest who travels alone – Rudyard Kipling

We are all born mad. Some remain so – Samuel Beckett

No man but a block head ever wrote, except for money – Samuel Johnson

Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste death but once – Shakespeare

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown – Shakespeare

Neither a borrower nor a lender be – Shakespeare

Sweet are the uses of adversity – Shakespeare

Brevity is the soul of wit – Shakespeare

The devil can cite Scripture for its purpose – Shakespeare

The eye sees all, but the mind shows us what we want to see – Shankaracharya

One is not born a woman, one becomes one – Simone De Beauvoir

An ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country – Sir Henry Wotton

In an examination those who do not wish to know ask questions of those who cannot tell – Sir Walter A Raleigh

On earth there is nothing great but man; in man there is nothing great but mind – Sir William Hamilton

One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life. That word is love – Sophocles

Woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself – Susan B Anthony

Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far – Theodore Roosevelt

There is no substitute for hard work – Thomas Alva Edison

The history of the world is but the biography of great men – Thomas Carlyle

Work is the grand cure of all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind – Thomas Carlyle

My country is the world, and my religion is to do good – Thomas Paine

It is much safer to obey than to rule – Thomas A Kempis

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth – Thoreau

To be a good shepherd is to shear the flock, not skin it! – Tiberius

Youth, even in its sorrows, has a brilliance of its own – Victor Hugo

No hero is mortal till he dies – W H Auden

Everything is funny as long as it happens to somebody else – Will Rogers

Rumor travels faster, but it won’t stay put as long as truth – Will Rogers

Variety is the very spice of life. That gives it all its flavour – William Cowper

If you think you can win, you can win – William Hazlitt

Women never reason and therefore they are (comparatively) seldom wrong – William Hazlitt

Be nice to people on your way up because you will need them on your way down – Wilson Mizner

If you steal from one author, it is plagiarism; if you steal from many, it is research – Wilson Mizner

The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world – W R Wallace

People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise – W Somerset Maugham

Old age has its pleasures, which, though different are not less than the pleasures of youth – Somerset Maugham

Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time – Winston Churchill

It is love that makes the world go round – W S Gilbert

Anonymous quotations

To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.

Whose bread I eat, his song I sing.

Throw a lucky man in the sea, and he will come up with a fish in his mouth.

The road to ruin is always kept in good repair.

Doctors bury their mistakes, lawyers hang them. Journalists put theirs on the front page.