What follows are 20 of our favourite quotes about just about everything under the sun. By turns witty, poignant, and hilarious, they are always nothing short of eloquent. We hope you enjoy these quotes (or ‘quotations’, if you’re a purist!).
Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to. It doesn’t so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. Henry James, The Ambassadors
Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements – the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution and for life – weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way for them to get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. So, forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today. Lawrence Krauss, ‘A Universe from Nothing’
I know that when I was a child, I thought the moon in the pond was real. How many things I thought real! I believed everything I was told–and I was happy! Because it’s a terrible thing if you don’t hold on to that which seems true to you today–to that which will seem true to you tomorrow, even if it is the opposite of that which seemed true to you yesterday. I would never wish you to think, as I have done, on this horrible thing which really drives one mad: that if you were beside another and looking into their eyes– as I one day looked into somebody’s eyes–you might as well be a beggar before a door never to be opened to you; for he who does enter there will never be you, but someone unknown to you with his own different and impenetrable world… Luigi Pirandello, Henry IV
Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur. (‘Change only the name, and this tale is told of you.’) Horace
A man whose desire is to be something separate from himself, to be a member of Parliament, or a successful grocer, or a prominent solicitor, or a judge, or something equally tedious, invariably succeeds in being what he wants to be. That is his punishment. Those who want a mask have to wear it. But with the dynamic forces of life, and those in whom those dynamic forces become incarnate, it is different. People whose desire is solely for self-realisation never know where they are going. They can’t know. Oscar Wilde, De Profundis
All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring. Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters
I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you might nudge the world a little or make a poem that children will speak for you when you are dead. Tom Stoppard, The Real Thing
If we seriously contemplate life it appears an agony too great to be supported, but for the most part our minds gloss such things over & until the ice finally lets us through we skate about merrily enough. Most people, I’m convinced, don’t think about life at all. They grab what they think they want and the subsequent consequences keep them busy in an endless chain till they’re carried out feet first. Philip Larkin; letter to J. B. Sutton, 1949
Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam. (‘The brevity of life denies us the hope of enduring long.’) Horace
One should always be drunk. That’s all that matters; that’s our one imperative need. […] But with what? With wine, poetry, or virtue as you choose. But get drunk. Charles Baudelaire
I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same kind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear. George Eliot; letter to Georgiana Burne-Jones, 1875
We fall in love. […] And, in time, we turn all our depression, all our sleepless nights and our pointless imaginings, into inspiration, and into the desire to inspire others. We devote our time and in some rare cases our lives to creating great and moving works of poetry, or paintings, or feats of architecture, or pieces of music that will be sung and played long after we’ve become powdered, chalky dust in a dark hole somewhere. And we do all this for one reason: in the hope that the person we so hopelessly love will hear a strain of our music, or read the words they caused us to write, or see the building that our love built. And then, then they will see us as we saw ourselves and as we saw them, and they will revise their opinion and love us back. But here’s the thing: not one single word we write, not one note of music we compose, will ever change a thing. That person we love will never love us back, and a few nice poems aren’t going to change that. And we know that deep down. But still we do it, because the alternative is to live out a life uncoloured by any greatness. And greatness, while a poor second to love, is the only second there is. Oliver Tearle, ‘O Tell Me the Truth about Love’
The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more. Christopher Hitchens, The Portable Atheist
Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Susan Ertz
Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever. Aristophanes
God may reduce you on Judgment Day to tears of shame, reciting by heart the poems you would have written, had your life been good. W. H. Auden, About the House
I do not think so. Since he went into France I have been in continual practice. I shall win at the odds. But thou wouldst not think how ill all’s here about my heart: but it is no matter. William Shakespeare, Hamlet
We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow
What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that — everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been. V. Virginia Woolf; her suicide note to her husband, March 1941