But there is a grey area, involving things that people have written but which express their personal opinions or philosophy. These are generally on the other
page; this page is mainly about quotations from fictional works (including plays).
I have however included some political or philosophical quotations on this page, where I think the title of the document might make the subject of a question
– for example, here and here – and indeed here.
| Quotation |
|
Author |
|
Title |
| Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents |
 |
Louisa May Alcott |
|
Little Women |
| It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a
wife. |
|
Jane Austen |
|
Pride and Prejudice |
| "I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!"
|
| The family of Dashwood had long been settled in Sussex. |
|
Sense and Sensibility |
| It was the day my grandmother exploded. |
|
Iain Banks |
|
The Crow Road |
| All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up ... |
|
J. M. Barrie |
|
Peter Pan |
| Nothing to be done (play) |
|
Samuel Beckett |
|
Waiting for Godot |
| The great fish moved silently through the night water, propelled by short sweeps of its crescent tail. |
|
Peter Benchley |
|
Jaws |
| There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. |
|
Charlotte Brontë |
|
Jane Eyre |
| I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to. (Travel book) |
|
Bill Bryson |
|
Notes from a Big Country |
| Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I can't be sure. |
|
Albert Camus |
|
The Outsider / Stranger |
| Once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or
conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought [the title character], "without pictures or conversations?" |
|
Lewis Carroll |
|
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland |
| The drought had lasted for ten million years, and the reign of the terrible lizards had long since ended. |
|
Arthur C. Clarke |
|
2001: A Space Odyssey |
| These two very old people are the father and mother of Mr. Bucket. (Opening sentence of) |
|
Roald Dahl |
|
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory |
| I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York |
|
Daniel Defoe |
|
Robinson Crusoe |
| Whether I turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else,
these pages will show. |
|
Charles Dickens |
|
David Copperfield |
| Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. |
|
Daphne du Maurier |
|
Rebecca |
| The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. |
|
L. P. Hartley |
|
The Go–Between |
| "I will not ... drink more than 14 alcohol units a week" is the first on a list of New Year's
resolutions that opens |
|
Helen Fielding |
|
Bridget Jones's Diary |
| "9st 3 (but post–Christmas)" is the first dated entry in |
| A squat grey building of only thirty four storeys. Over the main entrance the words, Central London
Hatchery and Conditioning Centre ... |
|
Aldous Huxley |
|
Brave New World |
| One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been
changed into a monstrous verminous bug. |
|
Franz Kafka |
|
Metamorphosis |
| Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. |
|
D. H. Lawrence |
|
Lady Chatterley's Lover |
| Call me Ishmael. |
|
Herman Melville |
|
Moby Dick |
| It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. |
|
George Orwell |
|
Nineteen Eighty–Four |
| It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I
was doing in New York. |
|
Sylvia Plath |
|
The Bell Jar |
| Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains. |
|
Jean–Jacques Rousseau |
|
The Social Contract (1762) |
| I was born in the city of Bombay ... once upon a time. No, that won't do ... |
|
Salman Rushdie |
|
Midnight's Children |
| I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. |
|
Dodie Smith |
|
I Capture the Castle |
| To begin at the beginning, it is spring, a moonless night in the small town, starless and bible black
(spoken by the narrator) |
|
Dylan Thomas |
|
Under Milk Wood |
| Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. |
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
Anna Karenina |
| When in the course of human events ... |
|
(Various) |
|
American Declaration of Independence |
| Arma virumque cano (Arms and the man I sing) |
|
Virgil |
|
The Aeneid |
| "You better not never tell nobody but God. It'd kill your mammy" |
|
Alice Walker |
|
The Color Purple |
| No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that human affairs were being
watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own. |
|
H. G. Wells |
|
War of the Worlds |
| Quotation |
|
Author |
|
Title |
| When I am dead, I hope it may be said / 'His sins were scarlet, but his books were read' |
|
Hilaire Belloc |
|
On His Books |
| Reader, I married him. (Opening sentence of Chapter XXXVIII, 'Conclusion';
"I" refers to the title character) |
|
Charlotte Brontë |
|
Jane Eyre |
| The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results
(often misattributed to Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, etc. This is the first known use) |
|
Rita Mae Brown |
|
Sudden Death (1984 novel) |
| al freír de los huevos lo verá ("you will see it when you fry the eggs")
|
|
Miguel de Cervantes |
|
Don Quixote |
| Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the number by which the dead outnumber
the living |
|
Arthur C. Clarke |
|
2001: A Space Odyssey |
| Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast / To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak |
|
William Congreve |
|
The Mourning Bride |
| Very flat, Norfolk (play) |
|
Noel Coward |
|
Private Lives |
| No man is an island, entire of itself |
|
|
John Donne |
|
Meditations, No. XVII |
| Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee |
| ... it was the universal Opinion of all Mr. Allworthy's Family, that he was certainly born to be
hanged (said, by the narrator, of the eponymous character) |
|
Henry Fielding |
|
Tom Jones |
| To his right were two stately gates of iron fantastically wrought, supported by stone pillars on whose
summit stood griffins of black marble embracing coats of arms and banners inscribed with the device 'Per Ardua ad Astra' (origin
of the RAF motto) |
|
H. Ryder Haggard |
|
The People of the Mist |
| … She–who–must–be–obeyed … (translation of the name by which a
mysterious white queen is known to a tribe of African natives – quoted by John Mortimer in Rumpole's 'pet' name for his wife) |
|
H. Ryder Haggard |
|
She |
| He would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them.
If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to |
|
Joseph Heller |
|
Catch–22 |
| Some men are born mediocre; some men achieve mediocrity; and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them |
| Two souls with but a single thought; two hearts that beat as one
|
|
Friedrich Halm |
|
Ingomar the Barbarian (Son of the Wild) |
| The great masses of the people … will more easily fall victim to a great lie
than to a small one. |
|
Adolf Hitler |
|
Mein Kampf |
| [the life of man, in a state of war, is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short |
|
John Hobbes |
|
Leviathan |
| Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori (It is sweet and honourable to die for one's country
– quoted by Wilfred Owen in the title of one of his best–known poems) |
|
Horace |
|
Odes (III.2.13) |
| I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. |
|
Jerome K. Jerome |
|
Three Men in a Boat |
| Three quarks for Muster Mark! / Sure he has not got much of a bark / And sure any he has it's all
beside the mark |
|
James Joyce |
|
Finnegans Wake |
| Man proposes, but God disposes |
|
Thomas à Kempis |
|
On the Imitation of Christ |
| Was this the face that launched a thousand ships / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium? |
|
Christopher Marlowe |
|
Doctor Faustus |
| A spectre is haunting Europe: the spectre of Communism |
|
Karl Marx |
|
The Communist Manifesto |
|
|
Friedrich Engels |
| Money couldn't buy friends but you got a better class of enemy. |
|
Spike Milligan |
|
Puckoon |
| All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others. |
|
George Orwell |
|
Animal Farm |
| War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. Slogans from |
|
George Orwell |
|
1984 |
| The cook was a good cook, as cooks go; and as cooks go, she went. |
|
Saki (H. H. Munro) |
|
Reginald on Besetting Sins (1904 short story) |
| Hell is other people. |
|
Jean–Paul Sartre |
|
No Exit (1944 play) |
| Walk? Not bloody likely. I'm going in a taxi (1914 play) |
|
George Bernard Shaw |
|
Pygmalion |
| To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers may at first sight appear a
project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers; but extremely fit
for a nation whose government is influenced by shopkeepers |
|
Adam Smith |
|
The Wealth of Nations |
| I am in the business of putting old heads on young shoulders. All my pupils are the
crème de la crème. Give me a girl of impressionable age, and she is mine for life (spoken by the eponymous character) |
|
Muriel Spark |
|
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie |
| To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive (1878 essay) |
|
Robert Louis Stevenson |
|
El Dorado |
| Tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possibles (All is for the best in the best of
all possible worlds) |
|
Voltaire |
|
Candide |
| Dans ce pays–ci il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres
(In this country it is good to shoot an admiral from time to time to encourage the others)
|
| Cela est bien dit ... mais il faut cultiver notre jardin (That is well said ... but let us
cultivate our garden)
|
| To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance |
|
Oscar Wilde |
|
An Ideal Husband |
| To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune … to lose both seems like carelessness |
|
Oscar Wilde |
|
The Importance of Being Earnest |
| I can resist everything except temptation |
|
Oscar Wilde |
|
Lady Windermere's Fan |
| [A cynic is] a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing |
| There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are either well–written or
badly–written. That is all. (from the Preface) |
|
Oscar Wilde |
|
The Picture of Dorian Gray |
| There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked
about. |
| A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. |
| The English country gentleman galloping after a fox – the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable |
|
Oscar Wilde |
|
A Woman of No Importance |
