Experience Quotes

"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song."

"A salesman is got to dream, boy."

"A sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth"

"All this happened, more or less."

"Allegory of the Cave"

"And I hope she'll be a fool—that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool."

"And I think it's gonna be a long long time..."

"And it'd be our own, an' nobody could can us."

"And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

"And we sleep and eat with death."

"And whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two."

"Angry people are not always wise."

"As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again."

"Ask her if she still keeps all her kings in the back row."

"Be a philosopher, but amidst all your philosophy be still a man."

"Because only one thing counts in this life: get them to sign on the line which is dotted."

"Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way."

"Because when we love, we always strive to become better than we are."

"But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was."

"Call me Ishmael."

"Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?"

"Can ye not discern the signs of the times?"

"Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour."

"Do I dare to eat a peach?"

"Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."

"Do…or do not. There is no try."

"Dust to dust"

"Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise."

"Eat, drink, and be merry."

"Even a mistake may turn out to be the one thing necessary to a worthwhile achievement."

"Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future."

"Everything the light touches is our kingdom."

"Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt."

"For sale: Baby shoes, never worn."

"For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing."

"For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."

"From the mouths of babes"

"Funny things are everywhere."

"Gild the lily."

"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams!"

"Good fences make good neighbors."

"Good golly, Miss Molly, sure like to ball."

"Goodness gracious, great balls of fire."

"have done it again. One year in every ten I manage it—"

"He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish."

"He was balancing himself on the dashboard of his car with that resourcefulness of movement that is so peculiarly American"

"Her voice is full of money"

"Hey Jude, don't make it bad"

"I always come back, and in my heart I love her all the time."

"I am an invisible man."

"I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known."

"I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' babies."

"I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."

"I done another bad thing."

"I fell into a burning ring of fire."

"I got a bad feeling about this."

"I had a farm in Africa."

"I have always depended on the kindness of strangers."

"I have observed this in my experience of slavery, that whenever my condition was improved, instead of its increasing my contentment, it only increased my desire to be free, and set me to thinking of plans to gain my freedom."

"I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged."

"I hope, or I could not live."

"I laugh in the face of danger."

"I never knew me a better time, and I guess I never will."

"I only know that I know nothing."

"I ought to of shot that dog myself, George."

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness"

"I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys."

"I started Early—Took my Dog / and visited the Sea"

"I walk the line."

"I will always love you."

"I will survive!"

"I wish I knew how to quit you."

"I'll never be your beast of burden."

"I, too, sing America."

"If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger."

"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

"If no one fought except on his own conviction, there would be no wars."

"If one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another."

"If you look for perfection, you'll never be content."

"If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals."

"In spite of everything, I still believe people are really good at heart."

"In the beginning"

"In the beginning there was faith—which is childish; trust—which is vain; and illusion—which is dangerous."

"In the midnight hour I can feel your power."

"In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."

"In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you."

"Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?"

"Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?"

"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."

"It is a thousand pities never to say what one feels."

"It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied."

"It is better to suffer injustice than to commit it."

"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."

"It is with considerable difficulty that I remember the original era of my being"

"It loves more readily than it hates."

"It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be."

"It occurred to me that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well."

"It was a pleasure to burn."

"It was as though some huge force were pressing down upon you […] persuading you, almost, to deny the evidence of your senses."

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

"It's been a hard day's night."

"I’d rather be a hammer than a nail"

"James Gatz—that was really, or at least legally, his name."

"Just standing on the Radley porch was enough."

"Just whistle while you work."

"K-Mart sucks."

"Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Bash her in."

"Let us go then, you and I"

"Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead."

"Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper."

"Life can only be understood backwards."

"Life for me ain't been no crystal stair."

"Life is pain. Anybody that says different is selling something."

"Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall."

"Like a rolling stone."

"Like a virgin."

"Little lamb, who made thee?"

"Live in the layers, not on the litter."

"Look, George. Look what I done."

"Maman died today."

"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains."

"Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father's passing."

"Mmm… Juicy Fruit."

"Money is the barometer of a society's virtue."

"Money often costs too much."

"Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself."

"Much madness is divinest sense—"

"My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth."

"My candle burns at both ends"

"My country is the world; my countrymen are mankind."

"My dear, I don't give a damn."

"My mother is a fish."

"My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

"My own house was an eyesore, but it was a small eyesore"

"My people hath been lost sheep."

"My precious."

"My soul has grown deep like the rivers."

"No one does wrong voluntarily."

"No rest for the wicked"

"No, Lennie, I ain't mad. I never been mad, and I ain' now. That's a thing I want ya to know."

"Not all those who wander are lost."

"Now what the hell ya suppose is eatin' them two guys?"

"O Captain! my Captain!"

"O my Luve's like a Red, Red Rose That's newly sprung in June"

"O Solomon don’t leave me here..."

"Of Man's first disobedience"

"Oh, the places you'll go!"

"Oh, the things you can find if you don't stay behind!"

"Old Sport"

"Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo"

"One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them."

"One could do worse than be a swinger of birches"

"One man's life or death were but a small price to pay for the acquirement of the knowledge which I sought"

"One must lie under certain circumstances and at all times when one can't do anything about them"

"Oops!…I did it again."

"Open the pod bay doors, HAL."

"Perhaps there aren’t any grownups anywhere."

"Philosopher King"

"Pride comes before the fall."

"Rage, rage against the dying of the light"

"Sad songs, they say so much."

"Serving on a jury forces a man to make up his mind and declare himself about something. Men don't like to do that. Sometimes it's unpleasant."

"She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together."

"so much depends upon a red wheel barrow"

"So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight."

"Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice."

"Somebody told me they thought he killed a man once."

"Sometimes I can feel my bones straining"

"Sorrow only increased with knowledge."

"Stay gold, Ponyboy."

"Tear down this wall!"

"The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind"

"The art of losing isn’t hard to master"

"The average man don't like trouble and danger."

"The Brain—is wider than the Sky—"

"The Christian religion cannot be believed by any reasonable person."

"The creature was a party of boys"

"The end justifies the means."

"The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their irises are one yard high"

"The hell with the rabbits. That's all you can ever remember is them rabbits."

"The Lord hath sought him a man after his own heart."

"The madness came into his eyes again."

"The mask was a thing on its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness"

"The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven."

"The officer nodded, as if a question had been answered."

"The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars."

"The only two certainties in life are death and taxes."

"The sun himself is weak when he first rises, and gathers strength and courage as the day gets on."

"The world, that understandable and lawful world, was slipping away."

"There are just some kind of men who—who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one"

"There are places I remember all my life, though some have changed."

"There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment."

"There is no Frigate like a Book"

"There is no new thing under the sun."

"There was no room for them in the inn."

"There you go again."

"There's a sucker born every minute."

"They call it a Royale with Cheese."

"They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God."

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."

"Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair"

"This fella's a regular Belasco."

"This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper."

"This was freedom. Losing all hope was freedom."

"Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."

"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

"Tomorrow is another day."

"Tomorrow will worry about itself."

"Try them! Try them! And you may!"

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference."

"Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing."

"Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious."

"War is Hell!"

"Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink."

"We all go a little mad sometimes."

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

"We are the hollow men"

"We could live offa the fatta the lan'."

"We just got to go on, that's all. That's what grownups would do."

"We rob banks."

"We speak student."

"We're all damaged somehow."

"We're all mad here."

"We're not in Kansas anymore."

"We've got to have rules and obey them. After all, we're not savages. We're English, and the English are best at everything."

"What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?"

"What is the point of worrying oneself too much about what one could or could not have done to control the course one's life took?"

"Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past."

"When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness' sake."

"When today fails to offer the justification for hope, tomorrow becomes the only grail worth pursuing."

"When we two parted"

"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."

"Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them."

"Wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there."

"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show."

"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past."