Quotes, Quotations and Sayings

We talk on principal, but act on motivation.

The awe and dread with which the untutored savage contemplates his mother-in-law are amongst the most familiar facts of anthropology.

Great men always pay deference to greater.

The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilized men.

We are no longer happy so soon as we wish to be happier.

The flame of anger, bright and brief, sharpens the barb of love.

We cannot be contented because we are happy, and we cannot be happy because we are contented.

Heat and animosity, contest and conflict, may sharpen the wits, although they rarely do; they never strengthen the understanding, clear the perspicacity, guide the judgment, or improve the heart.

Joe: What is known as the United States' attic? Andy: Massachusetts? Joe: No, the Smithsonian. (Later...) Andy: What was the name of Barbara Walters' first television partner? Joe: Jack Dempsey?;"During a game of Trivial Pursuit at 2 in the morning.

But the effort, the effort! And as the marrow is eaten out of a man's bones and the soul out of his belly, contending with the strange rapacity of savage life, the lower stage of creation, he cannot make the effort any more.

An ingenuous mind feels in unmerited praise the bitterest reproof.

Someone asked Sophocles, How do you feel now about sex Are you able to have a woman He replied, Hush man most gladly indeed am I rid off it all, as though I had escaped from a mad and savage master.

In argument, truth always prevails finally; in politics, falsehood always.

Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.

Of course I'm a black writer. I'm not just a black writer, but categories like black writer, woman writer and Latin American writer aren't marginal anymore. We have to acknowledge that the thing we call ''literature'' is more pluralistic now, just as society ought to be. The melting pot never worked. We ought to be able to accept on equal terms everybody from the Hasidim to Walter Lippmann, from the Rastafarians to Ralph Bunche.

Sir Walter, being strangely surprised and put out of his countenance at so great a table, gives his son a damned blow over the face. His son, as rude as he was, would not strike his father, but strikes over the face the gentleman that sat next to him and said ''Box about: twill come to my father anon.''

Sir Walter, with his 61 years of life, although he never wrote a novel until he was over 40, had, fortunately for the world, a longer working career than most of his brethren.

Education is a companion which no misfortune can depress, no crime can destroy, no enemy can alienate,no despotism can enslave. At home, a friend, abroad, an introduction, in solitude a solace and in society an ornament.It chastens vice, it guides virtue, it gives at once grace and government to genius. Without it, what is man A splendid slave, a reasoning savage.

Goodness does not more certainly make men happy than happiness makes them good.

We are no longer happy as soon as we wish to be happier.

We think that we suffer from ingratitude, while in reality we suffer from self-love.

In particular I may mention Sophocles the poet, who was once asked in my presence, ''How do you feel about love, Sophocles? are you still capable of it?'' to which he replied, ''Hush! if you please: to my great delight I have escaped from it, and feel as if I had escaped from a frantic and savage master.'' I thought then, as I do now, that he spoke wisely. For unquestionably old age brings us profound repose and freedom from this and other passions.

Absence and death are the same -- only that in death there is no suffering.

No thoroughly occupied person was ever found really miserable.

I warmed both hands before the fire of life; It sinks, and I am ready to depart.

The great end of all human industry is the attainment of happiness. For this were arts invented, sciences cultivated, laws ordained, and societies modeled, by the most profound wisdom of patriots and legislators. Even the lonely savage, who lies exposed to the inclemency of the elements and the fury of wild beasts, forgets not, for a moment, this grand object of his being.

O what a thing is age! Death without death's quiet.

Even savage animals can agree among themselves.

Young man, there is America, which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners.

What is reading, but silent conversation.

Many readers judge of the power of a book by the shock it gives their feelings --as some savage tribes determine the power of muskets by their recoil; that being considered best which fairly prostrates the purchaser.

All the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.

We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.

'Tis chastity, my brother, chastity. She that has that is clad in complete steel, and like a quivered nymph with arrows keen may trace huge forests and unharbored heaths, infamous hills and sandy perilous wilds, where through the sacred rays of chastity, no savage fierce, bandit, or mountaineer will dare to soil her virgin purity.

A strange thing has happened -- while all the other arts were born naked, this, the youngest, has been born fully-clothed. It can say everything before it has anything to say. It is as if the savage tribe, instead of finding two bars of iron to play with, had found scattering the seashore fiddles, flutes, saxophones, trumpets, grand pianos by Erhard and Bechstein, and had begun with incredible energy, but without knowing a note of music, to hammer and thump upon them all at the same time.

There is no quiet place in the white man's cities. No place to hear the unfurling of leaves in spring, or the rustle of an insect's wings. But perhaps it is because I am a savage and do not understand. The clatter only seems to insult the ears.

Every new stroke of civilization has cost the lives of countless brave men, who have fallen defeated by the ''dragon,'' in their efforts to win the apples of the Hesperides, or the fleece of gold. Fallen in their efforts to overcome the old, half sordid savagery of the lower stages of creation, and win the next stage.

The civilized savage is the worst of all savages.

Each new generation is a fresh invasion of savages.

It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.

Creditor. One of a tribe of savages dwelling beyond the Financial Straits and dreaded for their desolating incursions.

Every civilization when it loses its inner vision and its cleaner energy, falls into a new sort of sordidness, more vast and more stupendous than the old savage sort. An Augean stable of metallic filth.

Consult duty not events.

Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on. The small landowners are the most precious part of a state.

The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.

The savage bows down to idols of wood and stone: the civilized man to idols of flesh and blood.

The mountains, the forest, and the sea, render men savage; they develop the fierce, but yet do not destroy the human.

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual.

Equality, in a social sense, may be divided into that of condition and that of rights. Equality of condition is incompatible with civilization, and is found only to exist in those communities that are but slightly removed from the savage state. In practice, it can only mean a common misery.

The timidity of the child or the savage is entirely reasonable; they are alarmed at this world, because this world is a very alarming place. They dislike being alone because it is verily and indeed an awful idea to be alone. Barbarians fear the unknown for the same reason that Agnostics worship it --because it is a fact.