Over 40,000 Famous Quotes Sorted By Topic and Author

No, my friends, I go for the man that inherits family traditions and the cumulative humanities of at least four or five generations.

The crack-brained bobolink courts his crazy mate, Poised on a bulrush tipsy with his weight.

Boston State-house is the hub of the solar system. You couldn't pry that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation straightened out for a crow-bar.

The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each and every town or city.

Everything is twice as large, measured on a three-year-old's three-foot scale on a thirty-year-old's six-foot scale.

And when you stick on conversation's burs, Don't strew your pathway with those dreadful urs.

Of course everybody likes and respects self-made men. It is a great deal better to be made in that way than not to be made at all.

Day hath put on his jacket, and around His burning bosom buttoned it with stars.

Ay, here her tattered ensign down! Long has it waved on high, And many an eye has danced to see That banner in the sky.

Nail to the mast her holy flag, Set every threadbare sail, And give her to the God of storms, The lightning and the gale.

A man must get a thing before he can forget it.

The wind blows out, the bubble dies; The spring entomb'd in autumn lies; The dew dries up; the star is shot; The flight is past--and man forgot.

The hat is the ultimatum moriens of respectability.

I know it is a sin For me to sit and grin At him here; But the old three-cornered hat And the breeches and all that Are so queer.

There are three wicks you know to the lamp of a man's life: brain, blood, and breath. Press the brain a little, its light goes out, followed by both the others. Stop the heart a minute, and out go all three of the wicks. Choke the air out of the lungs, and presently the fluid ceases to supply the other centres of flame, and all is soon stagnation, cold, and darkness.

I never dare to write As funny as I can.

I find that the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it--but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.

People that make puns are like wanton boys that put coppers on the railroad tracks.

Thou art a female, Katydid! I know it by the trill That quivers through thy piercing notes So petulant and shrill. I think there is a knot of you Beneath the hollow tree, A knot of spinster Katydids,-- Do Katydids drink tea?

Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.