Random Quotations

The following quotations were randomly selected from the collections selected below .

A musicologist is a man who can read music but can't hear it.
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Sir Thomas Beecham (1879 - 1961)
Facing a mirror you see merely your own countenance; facing your child you finally understand how everyone else has seen you.
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Daniel Raeburn, The New Yorker, 05-01-2006
Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.
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Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784), quoted in Boswell's Life of Johnson
The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them.
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Alfred North Whitehead (1861 - 1947)
The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
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Walter Bagehot (1826 - 1877)
In great affairs men show themselves as they wish to be seen; in small things they show themselves as they are.
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Nicholas Chamfort (1741 - 1794)
It's a sad day when you find out that it's not accident or time or fortune, but just yourself that kept things from you.
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Lillian Hellman (1905 - 1984)
Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.
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Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), The Importance of Being Earnest, Act 3
Everybody has difficult years, but a lot of times the difficult years end up being the greatest years of your whole entire life, if you survive them.
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Brittany Murphy, Seventeen Magazine, September 2003
There is no good lighting that is healthy and for our well being without proper darkness.
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Roger van der Heide, TED: Why Light Needs Darkness, 2011
Exercise relieves stress. Nothing relieves exercise.
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Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata, Animal Crossing: Wild World, 2005
Reading is no substitute for action.
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Colleen Wainwright, Communicatrix, 07-26-08
The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.
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Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)
I am so beautiful, sometimes people weep when they see me. And it has nothing to do with what I look like really, it is just that I gave myself the power to say that I am beautiful, and if I could do that, maybe there is hope for them too. And the great divide between the beautiful and the ugly will cease to be. Because we are all what we choose.
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Margaret Cho, Margaret Cho\'s weblog, 03-23-06
He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate.
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Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862), Journal, February 11, 1840
Perseverance does not equal worthiness.
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Lawrence Kaplow, House M.D., Paternity, 2004
Just because we've been dealt a certain hand, it doesn't mean that we can't choose to rise above - to conquer the boundaries of a destiny that none of us wanted. To try to retain whatever essential humanity we can.
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Stephenie Meyer, Twilight, 2005
On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does.
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Will Rogers (1879 - 1935)
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.
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Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826), to Archibald Stuart, 1791
Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it.
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J. K. Rowling, Harvard Commencement Address, 2008
from these collections:

MM's Cynical Quotes LM's Motivational Quotes Classic Quotes
Cole's Quotables Rand Lindsly's Quotes Poor Man's College
alt.quotations Archives 20th Century Quotations Quotations by Women
The Devil's Dictionary Contributed Quotations

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