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.
