Featured quote · Time & mortality
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.”
Henry David Thoreau · Walden, “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For” · 1854
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Quote of the day“Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be.”
Robert Browning · “Rabbi Ben Ezra,” Dramatis Personae · 1864
Old age is not a decline to dread but the goal that youth was preparing for. Browning's speaker invites a listener to grow old with him because the later years complete the life.
Speakers, in their own words
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“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”Abraham Lincoln · “House Divided” speech, accepting the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”Albert Einstein · Interview with George Sylvester Viereck, “What Life Means to Einstein,” The Saturday Evening Post
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”Franklin D. Roosevelt · First Inaugural Address
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”Frederick Douglass · “West India Emancipation” speech
“It is not the critic who counts... The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.”Theodore Roosevelt · “Citizenship in a Republic,” speech at the Sorbonne
“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”Winston Churchill · First speech as Prime Minister to the House of Commons
“Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”John F. Kennedy · Inaugural Address
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”Martin Luther King Jr. · Letter from Birmingham Jail
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Misquote of the week
NOT MONROE“Well-behaved women seldom make history.”Often credited to Marilyn Monroe
Really from: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “Vertuous Women Found,” American Quarterly, 1976
A line from an academic article about forgotten Puritan women. Its author meant that ordinary, dutiful women are left out of history books, not that women should misbehave.
See the proof →Fact-checked: who really said it?
Famous lines with the wrong name attached · All misquotes →
NOT ROOSEVELT“Do one thing every day that scares you.”A line from a 1997 newspaper column written as an imaginary commencement…NOT CAESAR“Et tu, Brute?”Latin for “You too, Brutus?” In Shakespeare's play these are Caesar's dying…NOT VOLTAIRE“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”A summary of Voltaire's attitude written by an English biographer in 1906. She…NOT EINSTEIN“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”A saying from the recovery movement of the early 1980s. There is no trace of it…NOT DARWIN“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the…”A business professor's 1963 summary of Darwin's ideas, applied to management.…NOT ANTOINETTE“Let them eat cake.”A story about an unnamed “great princess” in Rousseau's memoirs, written when…NOT TWAIN“The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.”An old joke about a cold summer, retold about many cities. Twain's papers…NOT ARISTOTLE“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”A modern summary of Aristotle's ethics by the American historian Will Durant.…
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“Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful.”Mary Shelley · 4 min read“Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.”John Milton · 4 min read“Reader, I married him.”Charlotte Brontë · 3 min read“Listen to them—the children of the night. What music they make!”Bram Stoker · 3 min read“Honour thy father and thy mother.”Book of Exodus · 3 min read“O give thanks unto the LORD, for he is good, for his mercy endureth for ever.”Book of Psalms · 3 min read“Call me Ishmael.”Herman Melville · 3 min read“These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine…”Thomas Paine · 2 min read
Famous opening lines
The first sentences of books everyone half-remembers · All of them →
“Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful.”Mary Shelley · Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, Chapter 20“Listen to them—the children of the night. What music they make!”Bram Stoker · Dracula, Chapter 2 (Jonathan Harker's journal)“Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.”John Milton · Paradise Lost, Book 1, line 263 (Satan)“Reader, I married him.”Charlotte Brontë · Jane Eyre, Chapter 38 (Conclusion)“Call me Ishmael.”Herman Melville · Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, Chapter 1, “Loomings”“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”Leo Tolstoy · Anna Karenina, Part One, Chapter 1 (Constance Garnett translation)“We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.”Lewis Carroll · Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 6 (Pig and Pepper), the Cheshire Cat“'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even…”Clement Clarke Moore · “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” first published anonymously in the Troy Sentinel“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual…”Charles Dickens · David Copperfield, Chapter 12 (Mr Micawber)“Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents.”Louisa May Alcott · Little Women, chapter 1, opening line
166quotes explained
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“Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful.”Mary Shelley · 1818“Listen to them—the children of the night. What music they make!”Bram Stoker · 1897“Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.”John Milton · 1667“Reader, I married him.”Charlotte Brontë · 1847“Call me Ishmael.”Herman Melville · 1851“O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, the ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we…”Walt Whitman · 1865“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”Leo Tolstoy · 1878“These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this…”Thomas Paine · 1776“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”Sun Tzu · 500 BC“We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.”Lewis Carroll · 1865“'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”Alfred, Lord Tennyson · 1850“'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even…”Clement Clarke Moore · 1823
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