Quote of the Day Archive

Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights

— Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, 1923

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.

— Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, 1855

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

— Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 1849

If thou art pained by any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs thee, but thy own judgment about it. And it is in thy power to wipe out this judgment now.

— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, c. AD 180

To talk of many things: Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax— Of cabbages—and kings— And why the sea is boiling hot— And whether pigs have wings

— The Walrus, in Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll, 1871

…we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

— Lord Darlington, in Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde, 1893

Seek not that the things which happen should happen as you wish; but wish the things which happen to be as they are, and you will have a tranquil flow of life

— Epictetus, The Encheiridion, c. AD 125

It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy;—it is disposition alone.

— Marianne Dashwood, in Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, 1811

…a tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use.

— Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle, 1819

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on

— Omar Khayyam, Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, c. AD 1120

You wake up in the morning, and lo! your purse is magically filled with twenty-four hours of the unmanufactured tissue of the universe of your life!

— Arnold Bennett, How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, 1908

It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it

— Jane Eyre, in Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, 1847

The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

— Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, 1863

…freedom is of the essence; because you should be able to stop and go on, and follow this way or that, as the freak takes you

— Robert Louis Stevenson, Walking Tours, 1881

The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual

— Samuel Smiles, Self-Help, 1859

One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever

— Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden, 1911

…he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.

— Samuel Smiles, Self-Help, 1859

At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done—then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago.

— Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden, 1911

Neither a borrower nor a lender be: For loan oft loses both itself and friend

— Polonius, in Hamlet by William Shakespeare, 1603