Patrick > Patrick's Quotes

“My desire for knowledge is intermittent, but my desire to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant. The highest that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence. I do not know that this higher knowledge amounts to anything more definite than a novel and grand surprise on a sudden revelation of the insufficiency of all that we called Knowledge before,—a discovery that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy. It is the lighting up of the mist by the sun. Man cannot know in any higher sense than this, any more than he can look serenely and with impunity in the face of the sun: “You will not perceive that, as perceiving a particular thing,” say the Chaldean Oracles.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience and Other Essays

“Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism and Selected Critical Prose

“Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved -- loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.”
― Victor Hugo

“If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent”
― Victor Hugo

“Nothing makes a man so adventurous as an empty pocket.”
― Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame

“To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before--more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“No one who can read, ever looks at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one who cannot.”
― Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend

“Reflect upon your present blessings -- of which every man has many -- not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings

“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“There is no surer foundation for a beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in literature.”
― P.G. Wodehouse

“It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Man Upstairs and Other Stories

“I'm not absolutely certain of the facts, but I rather fancy it's Shakespeare who says that it's always just when a fellow is feeling particularly braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with the bit of lead piping.”
― P. G. Wodehouse, Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest

“A melancholy-looking man, he had the appearance of one who has searched for the leak in life's gas-pipe with a lighted candle.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Man Upstairs and Other Stories

“I always advise people never to give advice.”
― P.G. Wodehouse

“Everything in life that’s any fun, as somebody wisely observed, is either immoral, illegal or fattening.”
― P.G. Wodehouse

“Freddie experienced the sort of abysmal soul-sadness which afflicts one of Tolstoy's Russian peasants when, after putting in a heavy day's work strangling his father, beating his wife, and dropping the baby into the city's reservoir, he turns to the cupboards, only to find the vodka bottle empty.”
― P.G. Wodehouse , The Best of Wodehouse: An Anthology

“It was one of those parties where you cough twice before you speak and then decide not to say it after all.”
― P.G. Wodehouse

“Chumps always make the best husbands. When you marry, Sally, grab a chump. Tap his head first, and if it rings solid, don't hesitate. All the unhappy marriages come from husbands having brains. What good are brains to a man? They only unsettle him.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, Doctor Sally

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
― Mark Twain

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

“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
― Mark Twain

“′Classic′ - a book which people praise and don't read.”
― Mark Twain

“Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very;' your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”
― Mark Twain

“If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed.”
― Mark Twain

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