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Irish proverbs and sayings

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Ireland quotes and aphorisms

Carl William Brown — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 15:22:00 +0000

Quotes on Ireland

Ireland quotes and aphorisms, quotations and literary thoughts by great and famous Irish writers with also some proverbs.

I know where I’m going I know who’s going with me I know who I love And the devil knows who I’ll marry.
Traditional Irish folk song (Judy Collins) (Ireland quotes and aphorisms)

In Ireland the inevitable never happens and the unexpected constantly occurs.
John Pentland Mahaffy

Alcohol is a very necessary article… It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning.
George Bernard Shaw

When the Irishman is found outside of Ireland in another environment, he very often becomes a respected man. The economic and intellectual conditions that prevail in his own country do not permit the development of individuality. No one who has any self-respect stays in Ireland, but flees afar as though from a country that has undergone the visitation of an angered Jove.
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)

When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don’t believe?”
Quentin Crisp (1908-1999, British author)

There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being.
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)

Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.
George Bernard Shaw

He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.
George Bernard Shaw

What is wrong with priests and popes is that instead of being apostles and saints, they are nothing but empirics who say “I know” instead of “I am learning,” and pray for credulity and inertia as wise men pray for skepticism and activity.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)

All publicity is good, except an obituary notice.
Brendan F. Behan (1923-1964, Irish writer)

There is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary.
Brendan F. Behan (1923-1964, Irish writer)

The fickleness of the women I love is only equaled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Here, the churches seemed to shrink away into eroding corners. They seem to have ceased to be essential parts of American life. They no longer give life. It is the huge buildings of commerce and trade which now align the people to attention. These in their massive manner of steel and stone say, Come unto me all ye who labor, and we will give you work.
Sean O’Casey (1884-1964, Irish dramatist)

If church prelates, past or present, had even an inkling of physiology they’d realize that what they term this inner ugliness creates and nourishes the hearing ear, the seeing eye, the active mind, and energetic body of man and woman, in the same way that dirt and dung at the roots give the plant its delicate leaves and the full-blown rose.
Sean O’Casey (1884-1964, Irish dramatist)

We sing in a church, why can we not dance there?
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Quotes and aphorisms on Ireland

I would by no means wish a daughter of mine to be a progeny of learning; I don’t think so much learning becomes a young woman: for instance, I would never let her meddle with Greek, or Hebrew, or algebra, or simony, or fluxions, or paradoxes, or such inflammatory branches of learning; nor will it be necessary for her to handle any of your mathematical, astronomical, diabolical instruments; but… I would send her, at nine years old, to a boarding-school, in order to learn a little ingenuity and artifice: then, sir, she would have a supercilious knowledge in accounts, and, as she grew up, I would have her instructed in geometry, that she might know something of the contagious countries: this is what I would have a woman know; and I don’t think there is a superstitious article in it.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816, Anglo-Irish dramatist)

It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Those that vow the most are the least sincere.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816, Anglo-Irish dramatist)

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

When Satan makes impure verses, Allah sends a divine tune to cleanse them.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Of all the anti-social vested interests the worst is the vested interest in ill-health.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now.
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)

Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. Yes, yes, it’s the most comical thing in the world.
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)

Happiness consists not in having much, but in being content with little.
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington (1789-1849, Irish writer and socialite)

Beauty is all very well at first sight, but whoever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

I’m not a teacher: only a fellow-traveler of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead — ahead of myself as well as you.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Ireland quotations

The deep, deep peace of the double-bed after the hurly-burly of the chaise-lounge.
Patrick Campbell (1913-1980, Irish humorist)

Patrick Campbell (1913-1980, Irish humorist)
When the blind lead the blind, no wonder they both fall into — matrimony.
George Farquhar (c.1677-1707, Irish playwright)

To think, when one is no longer young, when one is not yet old, that one is no longer young, that one is not yet old, that is perhaps something.
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)

We lose our hair, our teeth! Our bloom, our ideals.
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)

And say my glory was I had such friends.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)

Think where man’s glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)

Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold.
George Fabricius (1678-1707, Irish dramatist)

Observe this, that tho a woman swear, forswear, lie, dissemble, back-bite, be proud, vain, malicious, anything, if she secures the main chance, she’s still virtuous; that’s a maxim.
George Farquhar (c.1677-1707, Irish playwright)

Only in a house where one has learnt to be lonely does one have this solicitude for things. One’s relation to them, the daily seeing or touching, begins to become love, and to lay one open to pain.
Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973, Anglo-Irish novelist)

Here we have bishops, priests, and deacons, a Censorship Board, vigilant librarians, confraternities and sodalities, Duce Maria, Legions of Mary, Knights of this Christian order and Knights of that one, all surrounding the sinner’s free will in an embattled circle.
Sean O’Casey (1884-1964, Irish dramatist)

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books nobody reads.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)

The drama’s altar isn’t on the stage: it is candle-sticked and flowered in the box office. There is the gold, though there be no frankincense or myrrh; and the gospel for the day always The Play will Run for a Year. The Dove of Inspiration, of the desire for inspiration, has flown away from it; and on it’s roof, now, the commonplace crow caws candidly.
Sean O’Casey (1884-1964, Irish dramatist)

I open with a clock striking, to beget an awful attention in the audience — it also marks the time, which is four o clock in the morning, and saves a description of the rising sun, and a great deal about gilding the eastern hemisphere.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816, Anglo-Irish dramatist)

In a good play every speech should be as fully flavored as a nut or apple.
J. M. Synge (1871-1909, Irish poet, dramatist)

Mistakes are the portals of discovery.
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)

Oliver Goldsmith quotes on Ireland

A man’s errors are his portals of discovery.
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)

If there was nothing wrong in the world there wouldn’t be anything for us to do.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Finality is death. Perfection is finality. Nothing is perfect. There are lumps in it, said the Philosopher.
James Stephens (1882-1950, Irish poet, author)

The intellect of man is forced to choose perfection of the life, or of the work, and if it take the second must refuse a heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)

There is nothing that can be changed more completely than human nature when the job is taken in hand early enough.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

The military mind is indeed a menace. Old-fashioned futurity that sees only men fighting and dying in smoke and fire; hears nothing more civilized than a cannonade; scents nothing but the stink of battle-wounds and blood.
Sean O’Casey (1884-1964, Irish dramatist)

Those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)

The doctor found, when she was dead, her last disorder mortal.
Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774, Anglo-Irish author, poet, playwright)

The doctor learns that if he gets ahead of the superstitions of his patients he is a ruined man; and the result is that he instinctively takes care not to get ahead of them.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Every doctor will allow a colleague to decimate a whole countryside sooner than violate the bond of professional etiquette by giving him away.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)

We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

The test of a man or woman’s breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Dying is a troublesome business: there is pain to be suffered, and it wrings one’s heart; but death is a splendid thing — a warfare accomplished, a beginning all over again, a triumph. You can always see that in their faces.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

I want to be all used up when I die.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by providence as an evil to mankind.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)

A man does not die of love or his liver or even of old age; he dies of being a man.
Percival Arland Ussher (1899-1980, Irish author, critic)

I balanced all, brought all to mind, the years to come seemed waste of breath, a waste of breath the years behind, in balance with this life, this death.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)

Man gives every reason for his conduct save one, every excuse for his crimes save one, every plea for his safety save one; and that one is his cowardice.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

James Joyce Quotes on Ireland

My valor is certainly going, it is sneaking off! I feel it oozing out as it were, at the palms of my hands!
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816, Anglo-Irish dramatist)

I think being a woman is like being Irish. Everyone says you’re important and nice, but you take second place all the same.
Iris Murdoch (British novelist, philosopher)

If women were as fastidious as men, morally or physically, there would be an end of the race.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

The only way for a woman to provide for herself decently is for her to be good to some man that can afford to be good to her.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

A woman is a branchy tree and man a singing wind; and from her branches carelessly he takes what he can find.
James Stephens (1882-1950, Irish poet, author)

To be born woman is to know — although they do not speak of it at school — women must labor to be beautiful.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)

The poor would never be able to live at all if it were not for the poor.
George Moore (1852-1933, Irish writer)

There’s no scandal like rags, nor any crime so shameful as poverty.
George Farquhar (c.1677-1707, Irish playwright)

The greatest evils and the worst of crimes is poverty; our first duty, a duty to which every other consideration should be sacrificed, is not to be poor.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Poverty does not produce unhappiness: It produces degradation.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

The seven deadly sins… food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven millstones from Man’s neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the millstones are lifted.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

What do I know of man’s destiny? I could tell you more about radishes.
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)

Happiness is a perpetual possession of being well deceived.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)

Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)

Joy is the will which labours, which overcomes obstacles, which knows triumph.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)

We are happy when for everything inside us there is a corresponding something outside us.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)

Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why.
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)

The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

If the announcer can produce the impression that he is a gentlemen, he may pronounce as he pleases.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Language is the amber in which a thousand precious and subtle thoughts have been safely embedded and preserved. It has arrested ten thousand lightning flashes of genius, which, unless thus fixed and arrested, might have been as bright, but would have also been as quickly passing and perishing, as the lightning.
Richard Chevenix Trench (1807-1886, Irish ecclesiastic, archbishop of Dublin)

Samuel Beckett Quotes on Ireland

Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)

Praise is the only gift for which people are really grateful.
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington (1789-1849, Irish writer and socialite)

Mountains appear more lofty the nearer they are approached, but great men resemble them not in this particular.
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington (1789-1849, Irish writer and socialite)

If one wishes to become rich they must appear rich.
Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774, Anglo-Irish author, poet, playwright)

Borrowed thoughts, like borrowed money, only show the poverty of the borrower.
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington (1789-1849, Irish writer and socialite)

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)

I would uphold the law if for no other reason but to protect myself.
Thomas Moore (1779-1852, Irish poet)

Whenever you wish to do anything against the law, Cicely, always consult a good solicitor first.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

I said there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are as slaves.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)

Fate is not an eagle, it creeps like a rat.
Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973, Anglo-Irish novelist)

Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful.
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)

The chief prerequisite for a escort is to have a flexible conscience and an inflexible politeness.
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington (1789-1849, Irish writer and socialite)

Conscience has no more to do with gallantry than it has with politics.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816, Anglo-Irish dramatist)

The true use of speech is not so much to express our wants as to conceal them.
Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774, Anglo-Irish author, poet, playwright)

I don’t want to talk grammar. I want to talk like a lady.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

From my earliest days I have enjoyed an attractive impediment in my speech. I have never permitted the use of the word “stammer.” I can’t say it myself.
Patrick Campbell (1913-1980, Irish humorist)

Superstition is only the fear of belief, while religion is the confidence.
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington (1789-1849, Irish writer and socialite)

You must be fit to give before you can be fit to receive.
James Stephens (1882-1950, Irish poet, author)

Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute! Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Only engage, and then the mind grows heated. Begin, and then the work will be completed.
John Anster (1789–1867, Irish poet)

Oscar Wilde Quotes on Ireland

Silences have a climax, when you have got to speak.
Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973, Anglo-Irish novelist)

Birth was the death of him.
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)

Those who know the least obey the best.
George Farquhar (c.1677-1707, Irish playwright)

We are not saints, but we have kept our appointment. How many people can boast as much?
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)

Better never than late.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)

You know it is not my interest to pay the principal, or my principal to pay the interest.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816, Anglo-Irish dramatist)

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

I shall state silences more competently than ever a better man spangled the butterflies of vertigo.
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)

So long as one does not despair, so long as one doesn’t look upon life bitterly, things work out fairly well in the end.
George Moore (1852-1933, Irish writer)

In dreams begin responsibility.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)

Education is not the filling of the pail, but, the lighting of the fire.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)

A man is original when he speaks the truth that has always been known to all good men.
Patrick Kavanagh (1905-1967, Irish poet, author)

Originality does not consist in saying what no one has ever said before, but in saying exactly what you think yourself.
James Stephens (1882-1950, Irish poet, author)

I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use — silence, exile and cunning.
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)

I… chose my wife as she did her wedding-gown, not for a fine glossy surface, but such qualities as would wear well.
Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774, Anglo-Irish author, poet, playwright)

A pretty wife is something for the fastidious vanity of a roue to retire upon.
Thomas Moore (1779-1852, Irish poet)

This comes of James teaching me to think for myself, and never to hold back out of fear of what other people may think of me. It works beautifully as long as I think the same things as he does.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

A nation is the same people living in the same place.
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)

G.B. Shaw Quotes on Ireland

The United Nations cannot do anything, and never could; it is not an animate entity or agent. It is a place, a stage, a forum and a shrine… a place to which powerful people can repair when they are fearful about the course on which their own rhetoric seems to be propelling them.
Conor Cruise O’Brien (1917-, Irish historian, critic, and statesman)

I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way: by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)

One drink is too many for me and a thousand not enough.
Brendan F. Behan (1923-1964, Irish writer)

I have fed purely upon ale; I have eat my ale, drank my ale, and I always sleep upon ale.
George Farquhar (c.1677-1707, Irish playwright)

I’m only a beer teetotaler, not a champagne teetotaler.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)

The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)

Love (understood as the desire of good for another) is in fact so unnatural a phenomenon that it can scarcely repeat itself, the soul being unable to become virgin again and not having energy enough to cast itself out again into the ocean of another’s soul.
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)

A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.
George Moore (1852-1933, Irish writer)

Let me go to hell, that’s all I ask, and go on cursing them there, and them look down and hear me, that might take some of the shine off their bliss.
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)

How selfhood begins with a walking away, and love is proved in the letting go.
Robert Cecil Day-Lewis (1904-1972, Irish poet)

Don’t set your wit against a child.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)

The tears of the world are a constant quality. For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)

It is only to the happy that tears are a luxury.
Thomas Moore (1779-1852, Irish poet)

Habit is a great deadener.
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)

The moment we pass out of our habits we lose all sense of permanency and routine.
George Moore (1852-1933, Irish writer)

To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.
Patrick Campbell (1913-1980, Irish humorist)

The heart that has truly loved never forgets, but, as truly, loves on to the close.
Thomas Moore (1779-1852, Irish poet)

It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Samuel Beckett Quotes on Ireland

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)

Sometimes a noble failure serves the world as faithfully as a distinguished success.
Edward Dowden (1843-1913, Irish critic)

Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. Yes, yes, it’s the most comical thing in the world.
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)

The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it. We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.
Robert Cecil Day-Lewis (1904-1972, Irish poet)

A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought, our stitching and unstinting has been naught.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)

Every man over forty is a scoundrel.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Old men are dangerous: it doesn’t matter to them what is going to happen to the world.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

That old man dies prematurely whose memory records no benefits conferred. They only have lived long who have lived virtuously.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816, Anglo-Irish dramatist)

Every one desires to live long, but no one would be old.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)

No wise man ever wished to be younger.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)

The latter part of a wise person’s life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)

How can one better magnify the Almighty than by sniggering with him at his little jokes, particularly the poorer ones.
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)

The bastard! He doesn’t exist!
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)

Money swore an oath that nobody who did not love it should ever have it.
Irish Proverb (Sayings of Irish origin)

Money is indeed the most important thing in the world; and all sound and successful personal and national morality should have this fact for its basis.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity, and beauty as conspicuously as the want of it represents illness, weakness, disgrace, meanness, and ugliness.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

The universal regard for money is the one hopeful fact in our civilization. Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity and beauty. Not the least of its virtues is that it destroys base people as certainly as it fortifies and dignifies noble people.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

I shall write a book some day about the appropriateness of names. Geoffrey Chaucer has a ribald ring, as is proper and correct, and Alexander Pope was inevitably Alexander Pope. Colley Cibber was a silly little man without much elegance and Shelley was very Percy and very Bysshe.
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)

I think a child should be allowed to take his father’s or mother’s name at will on coming of age. Paternity is a legal fiction.
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)

Jonathan Swift Quotes on Ireland

He who has never hoped can never despair.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

I believe I was impatient with unintelligent people from the moment I was born: a tragedy — for I am myself three-parts a fool.
Patrick Campbell (1913-1980, Irish humorist)

Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold.
George Fabricius (1678-1707, Irish dramatist)

Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

There’s man all over for you, blaming on his boots the fault of his feet.
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)

He comes into the world God knows how, walks on the water, gets out of his grave and goes up off the Hill of Howth. What drivel is this?
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)

Grant me some wild expressions, Heavens, or I shall burst.
George Farquhar (c.1677-1707, Irish playwright)

Ay, ay, the best terms will grow obsolete: damns have had their day.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816, Anglo-Irish dramatist)

It is not the literal past, the “facts” of history, that shape us, but images of the past embodied in language.
Brian Friel (1929-, Irish playwright, author)

Absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.
Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973, Anglo-Irish novelist)

I was court-martial in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.
Brendan F. Behan (1923-1964, Irish writer)

The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends. The friend becomes a traitor by breaking, however unwillingly or sadly, out of our own zone: a hard judgment is passed on him, for all the pleas of the heart.
Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973, Anglo-Irish novelist)

When delicate and feeling souls are separated, there is not a feature in the sky, not a movement of the elements, not an aspiration of the breeze, but hints some cause for a lover’s apprehension.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816, Anglo-Irish dramatist)

There comes a point in many people’s lives when they can no longer play the role they have chosen for themselves. When that happens, we are like actors finding that someone has changed the play.
Brian Moore (1921-, Irish novelist)

You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving.
Amy Carmichael (1867-1951, Irish missionary)

Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother’s love is not.
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)

There is nothing so consoling as to find one’s neighbor’s troubles are at least as great as one’s own.
George Moore (1852-1933, Irish writer)

Make sense who may. I switch off.
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)

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Irish quotes and aphorisms

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The post Ireland quotes and aphorisms first appeared on The World of English.

George Orwell Thoughts

Carl William Brown — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 15:18:23 +0000

George Orwell thoughts and ideas

George Orwell Thoughts, ideas, political views, art considerations, social commitment; a summary post that illustrates the whole philosophy of this great author.

The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States …
George Orwell

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac. In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting. Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidarity to pure wind. War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it. Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. (On the manipulation of language for political ends.) We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.
George Orwell, Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays

The past is a curious thing. It’s with you all the time. I suppose an hour never passes without your thinking of things that happened ten or twenty years ago, and yet most of the time it’s got no reality, it’s just a set of facts that you’ve learned, like a lot of stuff in a history book. Then some chance sight or sound or smell, especially smell, sets you going, and the past doesn’t merely come back to you, you’re actually IN the past. It was like that at this moment.
George Orwell, Coming Up for Air

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.
George Orwell

I had the lonely child’s habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary persons, and I think from the very start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued. I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created a sort of private world in which I could get my own back for my failure in everyday life.
George Orwell, Why I Write

All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane.
George Orwell, Why I Write

George Orwell thoughts on writing and politics

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements.
George Orwell, A Collection of Essays

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.
George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

The fallacy is to believe that under a dictatorial government you can be free inside. Quite a number of people console themselves with this thought, now that totalitarianism in one form or another is visibly on the up-grade in every part of the world. Out in the street the loudspeakers bellow, the flags flutter from the rooftops, the police with their tommy-guns prowl to and fro, the face of the Leader, four feet wide, glares from every hoarding; but up in the attics the secret enemies of the regime can record their thoughts in perfect freedom — that is the idea, more or less.
George Orwell, “As I Please”, Tribune, April 28, 1944

People are wrong when they think that an unemployed man only worries about losing his wages; on the contrary, an illiterate man, with the work habit in his bones, needs work even more than he needs money. An educated man can put up with enforced idleness, which is one of the worst evils of poverty. But a man like Paddy, with no means of filling up time, is as miserable out of work as a dog on the chain. That is why it is such nonsense to pretend that those who have ‘come down in the world’ are to be pitied above all others.
The man who really merits pity is the man who has been down from the start,
and faces poverty with a blank, resourceless mind.”
George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

“A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:

1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

And he will probably ask himself two more:
1. Could I put it more shortly?
2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you — even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent — and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself.”
George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself.
George Orwell, Animal Farm

The Seven Commandments:
Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
No animal shall wear clothes.
No animal shall sleep in a bed.
No animal shall drink alcohol.
No animal shall kill any other animal.
All animals are equal.
George Orwell, Animal Farm

“Comrades! he cried. You do not imagine, I hope, that we pigs are doing this in a spirit of selfishness and privilege? Many of us actually dislike milk and apples. I dislike them myself. Our sole object in taking these things is to preserve our health. Milk and apples (this has been proved by Science, comrades) contain substances absolutely necessary to the well-being of a pig. We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organization of this farm depend on us. Day and night we are watching over your welfare. It is for your sake that we drink the milk and eat those apples.
George Orwell, Animal Farm

George Orwell thoughts and opinions on the art of writing

Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.
George Orwell, 1984

It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realise that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.
George Orwell, 1984

Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.
George Orwell

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one’s love upon other human individuals.
George Orwell, In Front of Your Nose: 1945-1950

Totalitarianism … does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud. Such a society, no matter how long it persists, can never afford to become either tolerant or intellectually stable. It can never permit either the truthful recording of facts or the emotional sincerity that literary creation demands. But to be corrupted by totalitarianism one does not have to live in a totalitarian country. The mere prevalence of certain ideas can spread a kind of poison that makes one subject after another impossible for literary purposes. Wherever there is an enforced orthodoxy — or even two orthodoxies, as often happens — good writing stops. This was well illustrated by the Spanish civil war. To many English intellectuals the war was a deeply moving experience, but not an experience about which they could write sincerely. There were only two things that you were allowed to say, and both of them were palpable lies: as a result, the war produced acres of print but almost nothing worth reading.
George Orwell, The Prevention of Literature

Many people genuinely do not wish to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings. If one could follow it to its psychological roots, one would, I believe, find that the main motive for “non-attachment” is a desire to escape from the pain of living, and above all from love, which, sexual or non-sexual, is hard work.
George Orwell, Reflections on Gandhi

A totalitarian society which succeeded in perpetuating itself would probably set up a schizophrenic system of thought, in which the laws of common sense held good in everyday life and in certain exact sciences, but could be disregarded by the politician, the historian, and the sociologist.
George Orwell, Books v. Cigarettes

George Orwell on writing books

Fear of the mob is a superstitious fear. It is based on the idea that there is some mysterious, fundamental difference between rich and poor, as though they were two different races, like Negroes and white men. But in reality there is no such difference. The mass of the rich and the poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothing else, and the average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit. Change places, and handy dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? Everyone who has mixed on equal terms with the poor knows this quite well. But the trouble is that intelligent, cultivated people, the very people who might be expected to have liberal opinions, never do mix with the poor. For what do the majority of educated people know about poverty?
George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

A human being is primarily a bag for putting food into; the other functions and faculties may be more godlike, but in point of time they come afterwards. A man dies and is buried, and all his words and actions are forgotten, but the food he has eaten lives after him in the sound or rotten bones of his children. I think it could be plausibly argued that changes of diet are more important than changes of dynasty or even of religion….Yet it is curious how seldom the all-importance of food is recognized. You see statues everywhere to politicians, poets, bishops, but none to cooks or bacon-curers or market gardeners.
George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier

The war, therefore if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is merely an imposture. It is like the battles between certain ruminant animals whose horns are incapable of hurting one another. But though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that the hierarchical society needs. War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact. The very word “war,” therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist. The peculiar pressure that is exerted on human beings between the Neolithic Age and the early twentieth century has disappeared and has been replaced by something quite different. The effect would be much the same if the three superstates, instead of fighting one another, should agree to live in perpetual peace, each inviolate within its own boundaries. For in that case each would still be a self-contained universe, freed forever from the sobering influence of external danger. A peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war. This–although the vast majority of Party members understand it only in a shallower sense – is the inner meaning of the Party slogan: WAR IS PEACE.
George Orwell, 1984

In past ages, a war, almost by definition, was something that sooner or later came to an end, usually in unmistakable victory or defeat. In the past, also, war was one of the main instruments by which human societies were kept in touch with physical reality. All rulers in all ages have tried to impose a false view of the world upon their followers, but they could not afford to encourage any illusion that tended to impair military efficiency. So long as defeat meant the loss of independence, or some other result generally held to be undesirable, the precautions against defeat had to be serious. Physical facts could not be ignored. In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an aeroplane they had to make four. Inefficient nations were always conquered sooner or later, and the struggle for efficiency was inimical to illusions. Moreover, to be efficient it was necessary to be able to learn from the past, which meant having a fairly accurate idea of what had happened in the past. Newspapers and history books were, of course, always coloured and biased, but falsification of the kind that is practiced today would have been impossible. War was a sure safeguard of sanity, and so far as the ruling classes were concerned it was probably the most important of all safeguards. While wars could be won or lost, no ruling class could be completely irresponsible.
George Orwell, 1984

By the same author you can also read:

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Presidents who made America

The post George Orwell Thoughts first appeared on The World of English.

USA Presidents (Part 1)

Carl William Brown — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 13:46:03 +0000

Mount Rushmore American Presidents Sculpture

USA presidents Part 1. The men who made America. The most powerful figures in the world.

President’s Day, sometimes called Washington’s Birthday, is an official holiday observed in the United States of America on the birth of George Washington, the country’s first president. This year Presidents Day is celebrated on Monday, February 16, 2026.

Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for ‘tis better to be alone than in bad company.
George Washington

When angry, count ten, before you speak; if very angry, a hundred.
Thomas Jefferson

The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.
James Madison

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.
John Quincy Adams

An honorable defeat is better than a dishonorable victory.
Millard Fillmore

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.
Abraham Lincoln

I pity the man who wants a coat so cheap that the man or woman who produces the cloth will starve in the process.
Benjamin Harrison

Our differences are policies; our agreements, principles.
William McKinley

After the collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War, the President of the United States of America is undoubtedly the most powerful figure in the world. In fact he is the head of the Government of the most important economic and financial power and the Commander in Chief of the most formidable army in the world. That is why every four years the American presidential elections are followed with such great interest all over the world. Washington, the capital city of the USA, derives its name from the first President of the nation. It lies in the District of Columbia (DC) on the Potomac River half way between the North and the South. Its foundation was due mainly to President Thomas Jefferson.

On the rocky cliff-face of Mount Rushmore, South Dakota, are to be seen four colossal portrait sculptures. They are the heads of four great American Presidents: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Theodore Roosvelt.

George Washington (1789-1796)

He was the commander-in-chief of the American Army during the War of Indipendence against Britain. After the Victory of the former 13 British Colonies (1783) he became the first President of the US.
Before the United States won independence from British rule, George Washington was a farmer in the colony of Virginia. He served as a military as a military leader in the Revolutionary War. The colonists trusted him because he did not want power for himself. He wanted all the states and the people to work together as one. He wanted the government to serve the people well. Washington said that power should belong to institutions, not to men. He also said that people could understand the U.S. Constitution in many ways, not just one. He did not think that the United States should have strong ties with other countries. George Washington was the First President of the United States from 1789 to 1796. He is often called “the Father of Our Country!”

Washington’s Birthday, also known as Presidents’ Day, is a federal holiday held on the third Monday of February. The day honors presidents of the United States, including George Washington, the USA’s first president. The day commemorates past presidents of the USA. Washington’s Birthday is sometimes known as Presidents’ Day. This is because while most states have adopted Washington’s Birthday, some states officially celebrate Presidents’ Day. Some states pay particular attention to Abraham Lincoln, as his birthday was also in mid-February. In the weeks or days leading up to the holiday, schools often organize events and lessons for students about the presidents of the United States and George Washington in particular. It is a popular day for stores to start their sales. The US federal holiday is on the third Monday of February each year, but records show that George Washington’s birthday is on February 22. Many businesses are open as usual and many stores hold sales on Washington’s Birthday. Many delivery services, except for the Post Office, have a regular service and many, but not all, public transit systems operate on regular schedules. Some schools close for the whole week for a mid-winter recess. According to some government sources, Indiana observes the Washington’s birthday holiday in December.

John Adams (1797-1801)

The Adams’ were the first residents of the White House. They moved in in November 1800 while the paint was still wet. Mrs. Adams would hang her laundry in the East Room to dry. Adams was one of three presidents not to attend the inauguration of his successor. Not only was Adams disappointed in losing to tiny U.S. flag Jefferson, he was also grieving the death of his son Charles. Adams was the great-great-grandson of John and Priscilla Alden, Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620. The only presidents to sign the Declaration of Independence Adams and tiny U.S. flag Jefferson both died on its 50th anniversary, July 4, 1826. Adams’ dying words were “Thomas Jefferson survives”. Jefferson, however, had passed on a few hours earlier. In 1800, U.S. capital relocated to Washington, D.C. from Philadelphia and the Congress established the Library of Congress.

President’s Day

Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809)

He could do many things. As a young man, he was a farmer and a lawyer in Virginia. He was also a scientist an inventor, a philosopher; and an architect He designed his own home, called Monticello.
He could speak French, Italian, Spanish, Latin, and Greek. Many of Jefferson’s ideas became basic principles of the government of the United States. For example, he believed that all men are created equal, are born the same and should receive the same treatment under the law. He also said that power must come from “the consent of the governed” (the voters, not the leaders).
He wanted free elections, a free press and free speech. Thomas Jefferson held many important government positions. He was Ambassador to France, Secretary of State (under George Washington), Vice President (under John Adams), and the third Prwsidwsm of the United States, from 1801 to 1809. As President, Jefferson bought the huge Louisiana Territory from France.
In 1776 he helped to draw up the famous “Declaration of Independence” which stated that Britain’s American colonies were “of right free and independent States”. His name is also linked to the foundation of Washington City as the capital of the United States of America.

Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865)

He was the president of the Civil War (1860-1865) and of the abolition of slavery. At that time the Southern States still kept black slaves. Lincoln spoke out strongly against slavery. As a result, a Civil War broke out between the Northern and Southern States. The North won the war. The two sides were reunited as a nation and slavery was abolished. He grew up in Kentucky in a log cabin. He couldn’t go to school, so he taught himself. He became a lawyer. Friends called him “Honest Abe” As a delegate from Illinois, he served in Congress from 1847 to 1849. Lincoln was against slavery and gave some famous speeches about his ideas when he was running for the Senate. In 1861 Abraham Lincoln became the sixteenth President of the United States. He wanted the states of the Union to work together as one country, but he had to lead the North against the South in the Civil War. Some people thought that Lincoln was too strong as President because he used unconstitutional powers. President Lincoln freed the slaves with the Emancipation Proclamation. He had a plan to bring the South back into the Union after the Civil War, but he couldn’t carry it out because he was assassinated. In 1865 an actor named John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln.

Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (1858-1919)

often referred to as Teddy or by his initials, T. R., was an American politician, statesman, conservationist, naturalist, and writer who served as the 26th president of the United States from 1901 to 1909. He previously held various positions in New York politics, rising up the ranks to serve as the state’s 33rd governor for two years. He later served as the 25th vice president under president William McKinley for six months in 1901, assuming the presidency after McKinley’s assassination. As president, Roosevelt emerged as a leader of the Republican Party and became a driving force for anti-trust and Progressive policies.

Harry S. Truman (1884-1972)

was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as a United States senator from Missouri from 1935 to 1945 and briefly as the 34th vice president in 1945 under Franklin D. Roosevelt. Assuming the presidency after Roosevelt’s death, Truman implemented the Marshall Plan in the wake of World War II to rebuild the economy of Western Europe and established both the Truman Doctrine and NATO to contain the expansion of Soviet communism. He proposed numerous liberal domestic reforms, but few were enacted by the conservative coalition that dominated the Congress.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945)

was 50 when he became President in 1932, during the worst period of the Depression. He did not have the look of a leader: thin, stricken by polio, bound to a wheelchair… Yet he proved one of the greatest presidents ever. He launched the New Deal, that is a sort of alliance between all the social classes and ethnic groups to help the country regains its standards of production and distribute wealth with more justice. In 1936, 1940 and 1944 he was re-elected, but he died just a few weeks before the end of the war. He represents some of America’s greatest virtues: a strong will, able to go beyond the limits of paralysis; the ability of working harder and harder to reach the objective; a certain stubborness when he was convinced that he was right (which caused him some problems with Congress and the Supreme Court…).
The American people thanked him in a special way: FDR was the first and only president to be re-elected after the second term!

Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969)

nicknamed Ike, was an American military officer and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, he was Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe and achieved the five-star rank as General of the Army. Eisenhower planned and supervised two of the most consequential military campaigns of World War II: Operation Torch in the North Africa campaign in 1942–1943 and the invasion of Normandy in 1944. After the war, Eisenhower reverted to his regular rank of captain and a few days later was promoted to major, a rank he held for 16 years. Throughout his presidency, Eisenhower adhered to a political philosophy of dynamic conservatism. He described himself as a “progressive conservative” and used terms such as “progressive moderate” and “dynamic conservatism” to describe his approach. He continued all the major New Deal programs still in operation, especially Social Security. He expanded its programs and rolled them into the new Cabinet-level agency of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, while extending benefits to an additional ten million workers. He implemented racial integration in the Armed Services in two years, which had not been completed under Truman.

John F. Kennedy (1961-1963)

Kennedy (1917-1963) was the first Catholic to mount the stairway to the White House. He is mostly remembered for having shown Americans the “new frontier” of social reforms for the poor and the coloureds.
He was assassinated in Dallas in 1963. The reasons for his assassination have never been clarified. Though he was President for only three years, from 1961 to 1963, his personality and ideas changed America. He was both the first Roman Catholic and the yountielt President in the history of the country. He set clear goals for America. For example, he promised that the United States would land a man on the moon before 1970. Kennedy supported the ideas of Martin Luther King, Jr. and fought for civil rights, fair housing and programs to stop poverty. He asked Congress for more money for education and medical care for elderly people. Kennedy was against Communism. For example, when the Soviet Union placed missiles in Cuba, he sent U.S. ships to surround the island. But he believed that the best way to fight Communism was not by sending armies but by attacking poverty and injustice. He organized the Alliance for Progress to help the countries of Latin America. He started the Peace Corps and sent Americans to over sixty countries in Africa, Asia, and South America. These young volunteers worked and lived with the people, built schools, and taught farmers more modern methods. Kennedy worked to stop the testing of nuclear weapons. But on November 22, 1963, he was assassinated.

American Presidents Part 2

American Presidents Quiz

Full list of presidents of the United States

Here are the major U.S. holidays. In some cases, businesses, government offices, and schools will be closed, and also the International Days list.

New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day
MLK Jr. Day
President’s Day
Valentine’s Day
St. Patrick’s Day
Easter/Spring Break
Mother’s Day
Memorial Day
Father’s Day
4th of July
Labor Day
Halloween
Thanksgiving
Christmas Eve
Christmas Day
International Days List

The post USA Presidents (Part 1) first appeared on The World of English.

Best quotes on love

Carl William Brown — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 12:36:56 +0000

Best quotes on love

Best quotes on love. Great quotes, ideas and aphorisms chosen from the most famous authors, with a complete free ebook edited by Carl William Brown to download.

Faith is a mystery, love is a mystery, death is a mystery! However, I have never liked mysteries.
Carl William Brown

Teach only love for that is what you are.
Anonymous

Everyone admits that love is wonderful and necessary, yet no one agrees on just what it is.
Diane Ackerman

There is a law that man should love his neighbor as himself. In a few hundred years it should be as natural to mankind as breathing or the upright gait; but if he does not learn it, he must perish.
Alfred Adler

On this earth if there were no love there would certainly be no hatred and perhaps stupidity would not reign undisturbed.
Carl William Brown

Love is the only thing that we can carry with us when we go, and it makes the end so easy.
Louisa May Alcott

Miserable is that love that needs words to express itself.
Carl William Brown

Love is a great beautifier.
Louisa May Alcott

I was nauseous and tingly all over. I was either in love or I had smallpox.
Woody Allen

Gentleness is stronger than severity, water is stronger than rock, love is stronger than force.
Herman Hesse

If you are really interested in this topic and you want more quotes you can also download and read this book of Quotes and aphorisms on Love Edited by Carl William Brown

Quotes on love

Eros and Thanatos, two inseparable themes, deeply romantic and fascinating. Love of common sense and hatred of vanity; life instinct towards equity and death drive towards stupidity.
Carl William Brown

Sex alleviates tension. Love causes it.
Woody Allen

A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
Ambrose Bierce

Well-ordered self-love is right and natural.
St. Thomas Aquinas

The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.
Mahatma Gandhi

Love is made by two people, in different kinds of solitude. It can be in a crowd, but in an oblivious crowd.
Louis Aragon

Love, by its very nature, is unworldly, and it is for this reason rather than its rarity that it is not only apolitical but anti-political, perhaps the most powerful of all anti-political human forces.
Hannah Arendt

Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life.
Aristotle

Wicked men obey from fear; good men, from love.
Aristotle

A false enchantment can all too easily last a lifetime.
W. H. Auden

We must love one another or die.
W. H. Auden

The best way to forget one’s self is to look at the world with attention and love.
Red Auerbach

Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.
Marcus Aurelius

Love makes labor light. Love alone gives value to all things.
St. Teresa of Avila

Real love stories never have endings.
Richard Bach

For a crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.
Francis Bacon

Nuptial love makes mankind; friendly love perfects it; but wanton love corrupts and debases it.
Francis Bacon

You cannot belong to anyone else, until you belong to yourself.
Pearl Bailey

Love is a precious commodity, and like all precious goods, you buy it at a high price, but if you want to resell it, as usual, you no longer take a penny.
Carl William Brown

Love is to the moral nature what the sun is to the earth.
Honore De Balzac

The motto of chivalry is also the motto of wisdom; to serve all, but love only one.
Honore De Balzac

To try to write love is to confront the muck of language: that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive and impoverished.
Roland Barthes

Naturally, love is the most distant possibility.
Georges Bataille

Best quotes and aphorisms on Love

It is unfortunately very true that, without leisure and money, love can be no more than an orgy of the common man. Instead of being a sudden impulse full of ardor and reverie, it becomes a distastefully utilitarian affair.
Charles Baudelaire

The lover of life makes the whole world into his family, just as the lover of the fair sex creates his from all the lovely women he has found, from those that could be found, and those who are impossible to find.
Charles Baudelaire

Oh, love isn’t there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure.
Hermann Hesse

What is irritating about love is that it is a crime that requires an accomplice.
Charles Baudelaire

I no longer know if I wish to drown myself in love, wodka or the sea.
Franz Kafka

If you say, I love you, then you have already fallen in love with language, which is already a form of break up and infidelity.
Jean Baudrillard

To love someone is to isolate him from the world, wipe out every trace of him, dispossess him of his shadow, drag him into a murderous future. It is to circle around the other like a dead star and absorb him into a black light.
Jean Baudrillard

Love seeketh not itself to please, nor for itself hath any care, but for another gives its ease, and builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair.
William Blake

For a long time I have been looking for love and have not found it, so I said to myself that perhaps it was better to look for stupidity, there I would have no problems, in fact it is a very common element in nature.
Carl William Brown

Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself founded empires; but what foundation did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded an empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for Him.
Napoleon Bonaparte

The only victory over love is flight.
Napoleon Bonaparte

To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god.
Jorge Luis Borges

If I place love above everything, it is because for me it is the most desperate, the most despairing state of affairs imaginable.
Andre Breton

Love without attachment is light.
Norman O. Brown

When the girl I loved left me, I randomly went to a cemetery in a hilltop village, and there I buried my love. Every now and then I return and bring him some flowers.
Carl William Brown

Who so loves believes the impossible.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Never the time and the place and the loved one all together!
Robert Browning

Take away love and our earth is a tomb.
Robert Browning

Love the whole world as a mother loves her only child.
Buddha

The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart.
Buddha

The desire for possession, the love of power, rivalry and vanity; here are the four basic components of stupidity.
Carl William Brown

No cord or cable can draw so forcibly, or bind so fast, as love can do with a single thread.
Robert Burton

A life without love, no matter how many other things we have, is an empty, meaningless one.
Leo Buscaglia

A loving person recognizes needs.
Leo Buscaglia

Don’t hold to anger, hurt or pain. They steal your energy and keep you from love.
Leo Buscaglia

Don’t smother each other. No one can grow in the shade.
Leo Buscaglia

Love acquires meaning only as it’s shared.
Leo Buscaglia

Love can never grow old. Locks may lose their brown and gold. Cheeks may fade and hollow grow. But the hearts that love will know, never winter’s frost and chill, summer’s warmth is in them still.
Leo Buscaglia

Love is life. And if you miss love, you miss life.
Leo Buscaglia

What love we’ve given, we’ll have forever. What love we fail to give, will be lost for all eternity.
Leo Buscaglia

When man has love he is no longer at the mercy of forces greater than himself, for he, himself, becomes the powerful force.
Leo Buscaglia

In her first passion, a woman loves her lover, in all the others all she loves is love.
Lord Byron

Like the measles, love is most dangerous when it comes late in life.
Lord Byron

Lovers may be – and indeed generally are – enemies, but they never can be friends, because there must always be a spice of jealousy and a something of Self in all their speculations.
Lord Byron

Self-love for ever creeps out, like a snake, to sting anything which happens to stumble upon it.
Lord Byron

The best way will be to avoid each other without appearing to do so — or if we jostle, at any rate not to bite.
Lord Byron

Who loves, raves.
Lord Byron

In love, as in gluttony, pleasure is a matter of the utmost precision.
Italo Calvino

Best quote on love ever

Love and war are the same thing, and stratagems and policy are as allowable in the one as in the other.
Miguel De Cervantes

The desire for possession is insatiable, to such a point that it can survive even love itself. To love, therefore, is to sterilize the person one loves.
Albert Camus

Love is not altogether a delirium, yet it has many points in common therewith.
Thomas Carlyle

What a woman says to her ardent lover should be written in wind and running water.
Galius Valerius Catullus

Love, Arthur, is a poodle’s chance of attaining the infinite, and personally I have my pride.
Louis-Ferdinand Celine

One who has not only the four S’s, which are required in every good lover, but even the whole alphabet; as for example… Agreeable, Bountiful, Constant, Dutiful, Easy, Faithful, Gallant, Honorable, Ingenious, Kind, Loyal, Mild, Noble, Officious, Prudent, Quiet, Rich, Secret, True, Valiant, Wise; the X indeed, is too harsh a letter to agree with him, but he is Young and Zealous.
Miguel De Cervantes

‘Tis said of love that it sometimes goes, sometimes flies; runs with one, walks gravely with another; turns a third into ice, and sets a fourth in a flame: it wounds one, another it kills: like lightning it begins and ends in the same moment: it makes that fort yield at night which it besieged but in the morning; for there is no force able to resist it.
Miguel De Cervantes

When a man and a woman have an overwhelming passion for each other, it seems to me, in spite of such obstacles dividing them as parents or husband, that they belong to each other in the name of Nature, and are lovers by Divine right, in spite of human convention or the laws.
Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort

How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something, but to be someone.
Coco Chanel

Love is blind.
Geoffrey Chaucer

Love, friendship, and respect do not unite people as much as a common hatred for something.
Anton Chekhov

Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

Can there be a love which does not make demands on its object?
Confucius

Love of kindness without a love of learning will be obscured by foolishness.
Confucius

Love of persistence without a love of learning will be obscured by stubbornness.
Confucius

Art is nothing but the profound sublimation of a supreme love for the universe; and this is why life is the highest form for the artist.
Carl William Brown

Love of straightforwardness without a love of learning will be obscured by misdirected judgment.
Confucius

Love of wisdom without a love of learning will be obscured by excessive speculation.
Confucius

To love a thing means wanting it to live.
Confucius

If there’s delight in love, ‘Tis when I see that heart, which others bleed for, bleed for me.
William Congreve

Love is a tyrant sparing none.
Pierre Corneille

Men and women are not free to love decently until they have analyzed themselves completely and swept away every mystery from sex; and this means the acquisition of a profound philosophical theory based on wide reading of anthropology and enlightened practice.
Aleister Crowley

A loving heart is the truest wisdom.
Charles Dickens

I argue thee that love is life. And life hath immortality.
Emily Dickinson

Glamour is assurance. It is a kind of knowing that you are all right in every way, mentally and physically and in appearance, and that, whatever the occasion or the situation, you are equal to it.
Marlene Dietrich

I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known.
Walt Disney

The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man.
Charles Darwin

The more you like yourself, the less you are like anyone else, which makes you unique.
Walt Disney

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
Friedrich Nietzsche

The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can never end.
Benjamin Disraeli

We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end.
Benjamin Disraeli

Busy old fool, unruly Sun, why dost thou thus through windows and through curtains call on us? Must to thy motions lovers seasons run?
John Donne

Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.
John Donne

Love was as subtly caught as a disease; But being got it is a treasure sweet, which to defend is harder than to get: And ought not be profaned on either part, for though ‘Tis got by chance, ‘Tis kept by art.
John Donne

Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
John Donne

Love all that has been created by God, both the whole and every grain of sand. Love every leaf and every ray of light. Love the beasts and the birds, love the plants, love every separate fragment. If you love each fragment, you will understand the mystery of the whole resting in God.
Fyodor Dostoevsky

Love is love’s reward.
John Dryden

Love is not in our choice but in our fate.
John Dryden

Love works a different way in different minds, the fool it enlightens and the wise it blinds.
John Dryden

To love one child and to love all children, whether living or dead – somewhere these two loves come together. To love a no-good but humble punk and to love an honest man who believes himself to be an honest man – somewhere these, too, come together.
Marguerite Duras

It’s afterwards you realize that the feeling of happiness you had with a man didn’t necessarily prove that you loved him.
Marguerite Duras

Best quotes on love

It was the men I deceived the most that I loved the most.
Marguerite Duras

Love and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Gravitation can not be held responsible for people falling in love
Albert Einstein

Love is a better teacher than duty.
Albert Einstein

A supreme love, a motive that gives a sublime rhythm to a woman’s life, and exalts habit into partnership with the soul’s highest needs, is not to be had where and how she wills.
George Eliot

But is it what we love, or how we love, that makes true good?
George Eliot

For what is love itself, for the one we love best? An enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love.
George Eliot

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 literature and speech and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.
George Eliot

‘Tis what I love determines how I love.
George Eliot

Love is most nearly itself when here and now cease to matter.
T. S. Eliot

A low self-love in the parent desires that his child should repeat his character and fortune.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals.
Benjamin Franklin

He is not a lover who does not love forever.
Euripides

Love is all we have, the only way that each can help the other.
Euripides

At any rate, let us love for a while, for a year or so, you and me. That’s a form of divine drunkenness that we can all try.
F. Scott Fitzgerald

Of all the icy blasts that blow on love, a request for money is the most chilling and havoc-wreaking.
Gustave Flaubert

The first thing is to love your sport. Never do it to please someone else. It has to be yours.
Peggy Fleming

The idea that nations should love one another, or that business concerns or marketing boards should love one another, or that a man in Portugal should love a man in Peru of whom he has never heard — it is absurd, unreal, dangerous. The fact is we can only love what we know personally. And we cannot know much.
Edward M. Forster

Lovers who love truly do not write down their happiness.
Anatole France

Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.
Sigmund Freud

One is very crazy when in love.
Sigmund Freud

We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love, never so forlornly unhappy as when we have lost our love object or its love.
Sigmund Freud

Immature love says: “I love you because I need you.” Mature love says: “I need you because I love you.”
Erich Fromm

Love is often nothing but a favorable exchange between two people who get the most of what they can expect, considering their value on the personality market.
Erich Fromm

Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.
Erich Fromm

Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
Robert Frost

A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.
Mahatma Gandhi

Love has more force than a besieging army.
Mahatma Gandhi

My life is an indivisible whole, and all my attitudes run into one another; and they all have their rise in my insatiable love for mankind.
Mahatma Gandhi

Whenever you are confronted with an opponent, conquer him with love.
Mahatma Gandhi

Where there is love there is life.
Mahatma Gandhi

All life is the struggle, the effort to be itself.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset

What then in love can woman do? If we grow fond they shun us. And when we fly them, they pursue: But leave us when they’ve won us.
John Gay

Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.
Kahlil Gibran

If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don’t, they never were.
Kahlil Gibran

It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and persevering courtship. Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created for years or even generations.
Kahlil Gibran

Life without love is like a tree without blossom and fruit.
Kahlil Gibran

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love.
Kahlil Gibran

Love quotes and aphorisms

The chemist who can extract from his heart’s elements, compassion, respect, longing, patience, regret, surprise, and forgiveness and compound them into one can create that atom which is called love.
Kahlil Gibran

If I love you, what business is it of yours?
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Self-love exaggerates our faults as well as our virtues.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

That is the true season of love; when we believe that we alone can love, that no one could ever have loved as much before, and that no one will ever love in the same way again.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Let the first impulse pass, wait for the second.
Baltasar Gracian

A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all. Circumspection and devotion are a contradiction in terms.
Thomas Hardy

You are all you will ever have for certain.
June Havoc

The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves. We cannot force love.
William Hazlitt

Madame, it is an old word and each one takes it new and wears it out himself. It is a word that fills with meaning as a bladder with air and the meaning goes out of it as quickly. It may be punctured as a bladder is punctured and patched and blown up again and if you have not had it, it does not exist for you. All people talk of it, but those who have had it are marked by it, and I would not wish to speak of it further since of all things it is the most ridiculous to talk of and only fools go through it many times.
Ernest Hemingway

Love is stronger than violence.
Hermann Hesse

It is only important to love the world … to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration and respect.
Hermann Hesse

Subdue your passion or it will subdue you.
Horace

The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather in spite of ourselves.
Victor Hugo

Love is the reduction of the universe to a single being.
Victor Hugo

I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, his cloak was out at the elbows, the water passed through his shoes – and the stars through his soul.
Victor Hugo

To love another person is to see the face of God.
Victor Hugo

What’s a man’s first duty? The answer is brief: To be himself.
Henrik Ibsen

I would rather live and love where death is king than have eternal life where love is not.
Robert Green Ingersoll

Love is the only bow of life’s dark cloud. It is the Morning and Evening Star. It shines upon the cradle of the babe, and sheds its radiance upon the quiet tomb. It is the Mother of Art, inspirer of poet, patriot, and philosopher. It is the air and light of every heart, builder of every home, kinder of every fire on every hearth, It was the first dream of immortality. It fills the world with melody. Love is the magician, the enchanter, that changes worthless things to joy, and makes right royal kings of common clay.
Robert Green Ingersoll

Love is the only bow on life’s dark cloud.
Robert Green Ingersoll

Nothing is more beautiful than the love that has weathered the storms of life. The love of the young for the young, that is the beginning of life. But the love of the old for the old, that is the beginning of things longer.
Jerome K. Jerome

Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.
Samuel Johnson

Self-love is often rather arrogant than blind; it does not hide our faults from ourselves, but persuades us that they escape the notice of others.
Samuel Johnson

Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. That’s why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.
Erica Jong

Where love rules, there is no will to power; where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.
Carl Jung

He who loves with purity considers not the gift of the lover, but the love of a giver.
Thomas a Kempis

How sweet it is to love, and to be dissolved, and as it were to bathe myself in thy love.
Thomas a Kempis

Love feels no burden, regards not labors, strives toward more than it attains, argues not of impossibility, since it believes that it may and can do all things. Therefore it avails for all things, and fulfils and accomplishes much where one not a lover falls and lies helpless.
Thomas a Kempis

Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of trouble, attempts what is above its strength…. It is therefore able to undertake all things, and it completes many things, and warrants them to take effect, where he who does not love would faint and lie down.
Thomas a Kempis

Love is swift, sincere, pious, joyful, generous, strong, patient, faithful, prudent, long-suffering, courageous, and never seeking its own; for wheresoever a person seeketh his own, there he falleth from love.
Thomas a Kempis

Love makes everything that is heavy light.
Thomas a Kempis

Whoever loves much, does much.
Thomas a Kempis

Love possesses not nor will it be possessed, for love is sufficient unto love.
Kahlil Kibran

Be that self which one truly is.
Soren Kierkegaard

At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.
Martin Luther King Jr.

Darkness can not drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Martin Luther King Jr.

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Great quotes on love

Carl William Brown — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 11:22:49 +0000

Great quotes on love

Great quotes on love. Great aphorisms, quotations and ideas on love and lover selected by famous authors with a complete free e-book of quotes to download.

Great quotes on love. I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.
Martin Luther King Jr.

Heroic love is the property of those superior natures who are called insane (insano) not because they do not know, but because they over-know (soprasanno).
Giordano Bruno

Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.
Martin Luther King Jr.

The moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstasy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transformed.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Love is the answer, but while you are waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions.
Woody Allen

Miserable is that love that needs words to express itself.
Carl William Brown

At the beginning and at the end of love, the two lovers are embarrassed to find themselves alone.
Jean De La Bruyere

Oh, love isn’t there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure.
Hermann Hesse

One seeks to make the loved one entirely happy, or, if that cannot be, entirely wretched.
Jean De La Bruyere

To be among people one loves, that’s sufficient; to dream, to speak to them, to be silent among them, to think of indifferent things; but among them, everything is equal.
Jean De La Bruyere

If you are really interested in this topic and you want more quotes you can also download and read this book of Quotes and aphorisms on Love Edited by Carl William Brown

Quotes on love

We can recognize the dawn and the decline of love by the uneasiness we feel when alone together.
Jean De La Bruyere

If we are to judge of love by its consequences, it more nearly resembles hatred than friendship.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld

It is with true love as it is with ghosts; everyone talks about it, but few have seen it.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Love is to the soul of him who loves, as what the soul is to the body that it animates.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Love of glory, fear of shame, greed for fortune, the desire to make life agreeable and comfortable, and the wish to depreciate others – all of these are often the causes of the bravery that is spoken so highly of by men.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Love, like fire, cannot continue to exist without continual motion; both cease to live so soon as they cease to hope or to fear.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Lovers do not wish to see the faults of their mistresses until their enchantment is at an end.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Where both deliberate, the love is slight: Who ever lov’d, that lov’d not at first sight?
Christopher Marlowe

Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?
Christopher Marlowe

Now matter how many discoveries we make in the vast regions of self-love, undiscovered regions still remain there.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Self-love either increases or diminishes our measure of the good qualities of our friends, and does so in proportion to the satisfaction we feel with them; and we judge their virtue by way they act towards us.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The more one loves a mistress, the more one is ready to hate her.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld

There are few people who are not ashamed of their love affairs when the infatuation is over.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld

There are more people without self-love than there are without envy.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld

There are very few people who are not ashamed of having been in love when they no longer love each other.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld

True love is like a ghost: everyone speaks of it, but few have seen it.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld

We are nearer loving those who hate us than those who love us more than we wish.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld

We can love nothing except what we base on our own selves, and when we prefer our friends to ourselves, we are just following our own taste or pleasure. Nevertheless, it is only by that preference that friendship can be true and perfect.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld

We love those who admire us, but not those whom we admire.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld

We often persuade ourselves to love people who are more powerful than we are; yet it is self-interest alone that produces the friendship. We do not give our hearts away for the good we wish to do to them], but for what good we expect to receive from them.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld

What makes lovers never tire of one another is that they talk always about themselves.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld

When we are tired of loving, we are quite content if our mistress should become faithless, since it loosens us from our responsibility of fidelity.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Whether life is worth living depends on whether there is love in life.
R. D. Laing

To love for the sake of being loved is human, but to love for the sake of loving is angelic.
Alphonse De Lamartine

The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white. Neither need you do anything but be yourself.
Lao-Tzu

Great quotes on love

I shall always be a priest of love.
D. H. Lawrence

Love is the flower of life, and blossoms unexpectedly and without law, and must be plucked where it is found, and enjoyed for the brief hour of its duration.
D. H. Lawrence

I no longer know if I wish to drown myself in love, wodka or the sea.
Franz Kafka

My God, these folks don’t know how to love — that’s why they love so easily.
D. H. Lawrence

Gentleness is stronger than severity, water is stronger than rock, love is stronger than force.
Herman Hesse

Friendship, love, education, solidarity are all values that take on more value if there is even a little money.
Carl William Brown

The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man.
Charles Darwin

The world is wonderful and beautiful and good beyond one’s wildest imagination. Never, never, never could one conceive what love is, beforehand, never. Life can be great — quite god-like. It can be so. God be thanked I have proved it.
D. H. Lawrence

To love is to place our happiness in the happiness of another.
Gottfried Wilhelm Von Leibniz

The only thing we can never get enough of is love. And the only thing we never give enough of is love.
Henry Miller

A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.
George Moore

Love is a promise, love is a souvenir, once given never forgotten, never let it disappear.
John Lennon

We’ve got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant. You can’t just accept it and leave it in the cupboard or just think it’s going to get on by itself. You’ve got to keep watering it. You’ve got to really look after it and nurture it.
John Lennon

What is love? It is the morning and the evening star.
Sinclair Lewis

Great passions, my dear, don’t exist: they’re liars fantasies. What do exist are little loves that may last for a short or a longer while.
Anna Magnani

The pain of leaving those you grow to love is only the prelude to understanding yourself and others.
Shirley MacLaine

Love means the body, the soul, the life, the entire being. We feel love as we feel the warmth of our blood, we breathe love as we breathe air, we hold it in ourselves as we hold our thoughts. Nothing more exists for us.
Guy de Maupassant

The love boat has crashed against the everyday.
Vladimir Mayakovsky

Love is all you need.
Paul McCartney

Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.
H. L. Mencken

I have always distinctly separated love from sex, and for this reason I am also more than convinced that a man can rarely be faithful, physically speaking.
Carl William Brown

Love is the delusion that one man or woman differs from another.
H. L. Mencken

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
H. L. Mencken

To be in love is merely to be in a perpetual state of anesthesia.
H. L. Mencken

These two imparadised in one another’s arms, the happier Eden, shall enjoy their fill of bliss on bliss.
John Milton

Do not think that love in order to be genuine has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired. Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.
Mother Teresa

I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love.
Mother Teresa

I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. No, I wouldn’t touch a leper for a thousand pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God.
Mother Teresa

If we want a love message to be heard, it has to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.
Mother Teresa

In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love
Mother Teresa

Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.
Mother Teresa

Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do… but how much love we put in that action.
Mother Teresa

Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand.
Mother Teresa

Love is a state in which a man sees things most decidedly as the are not.
Friedrich Nietzsche

The spiritualization of sensuality is called love: it is a great triumph over Christianity.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of withering, of tarnishing.
Anais Nin

To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others.
George Orwell

No woman marries for money; they are all clever enough, before marrying a millionaire, to fall in love with him first.
Cesare Pavese

When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.
Blaise Pascal

Great quotes and aphorisms on love

The search for a new personality is futile; what is fruitful is the human interest the old personality can take in new activities.
Cesare Pavese

At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet.
Plato

Learn what you are and be such.
Pindar

Love is a serious mental disease.
Plato

Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the Gods.
Plato

If you find someone you love in your life, then hang on to that love.
Princess Diana

I think the biggest disease the world suffers from in this day and age is the disease of people feeling unloved. I know that I can give love for a minute, for half an hour, for a day, for a month, but I can give. I am very happy to do that; I want to do that.
Princess Diana

I remember when I used to sit on hospital beds and hold people’s hands, people used to be shocked because they’d never seen this before. To me it was quite normal.
Princess Diana

I know that I can give love for a minute, for half an hour; for a day, for a month, but I can give and I’m very happy to do that and I want to do that.
Princess Diana

Everyone of us needs to show how much we care for each other and, in the process, care for ourselves.
Princess Diana

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
Friedrich Nietzsche

An orange on the table, your dress on the rug, and you in my bed, sweet present of the present, cool of night, warmth of my life.
Jacques Prevert

In a separation it is the one who is not really in loved who says the more tender things.
Marcel Proust

Every love reveals us our will to live and create, but since ours is a destiny of death, even the noblest sentiment is nothing but a stupid illusion.
Carl William Brown

People who are not in love fail to understand how an intelligent man can suffer because of a very ordinary woman. This is like being surprised that anyone should be stricken with cholera because of a creature so insignificant as the comma bacillus.
Marcel Proust

He [Freud] often said three things were impossible to fulfill completely; healing, education, governing. He limited his goals in analytic treatment to brining the patient to the point where he could work for a living and learn to love.
Theodor Reik

The man who has never made a fool of himself in love will never be wise in love.
Theodor Reik

Love is like an hourglass, with the heart filling up as the brain empties.
Jules Renard

A woman who could always love would never grow old; and the love of mother and wife would often give or preserve many charms if it were not too often combined with parental and conjugal anger. There remains in the face of women who are naturally serene and peaceful, and of those rendered so by religion, an after-spring, and later an after-summer, the reflex of their most beautiful bloom.
Jean Paul Richter

For one human being to love another that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks.
Rainer Maria Rilke

This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love; the more they give, the more they possess.
Rainer Maria Rilke

Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.
Rainer Maria Rilke

I believe that love is the greatest thing in the world, that it alone can overcome hate and that right can and will triumph over might.
John D. Rockefeller

No man is defeated without until he has first been defeated within.
Eleanor Roosevelt

Remember always that you have not only the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.
Eleanor Roosevelt

The value of love will always be stronger than the value of hate.. Any nation or group of nations which employs hatred eventually is torn to pieces by hatred…
Franklin D. Roosevelt

Love shall be our token; love be yours and love be mine.
Christina Rossetti

Our affections as well as our bodies are in perpetual flux.
Jean Jacques Rousseau

True love means simply taking care of our humanity
Carl William Brown

Many people when they fall in love look for a little haven of refuge from the world, where they can be sure of being admired when they are not admirable, and praised when they are not praiseworthy.
Bertrand Russell

The root of the matter… the thing I mean… is love, Christian love, or compassion. If you feel this, you have a motive for existence, a guide for action, a reason for courage, an imperative necessity for intellectual honesty.
Bertrand Russell

Love is not just looking at each other, it’s looking in the same direction.
Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.
Antoine De Saint-Exupery

I regard as a mortal sin not only the lying of the senses in matters of love, but also the illusion which the senses seek to create where love is only partial. I say, I believe, that one must love with all of one’s being, or else live, come what may, a life of complete chastity.
George Sand

There is only one happiness in life — to love and to be loved.
George Sand

The lover knows much more about absolute good and universal beauty than any logician or theologian, unless the latter, too, be lovers in disguise.
George Santayana

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety. Other women cloy the appetites they feed, but she makes hungry where most she satisfies.
William Shakespeare

Great aphorisms and quotes on love

But love is blind, and lovers cannot see What petty follies they themselves commit
William Shakespeare

For by his face straight shall you know his heart.
William Shakespeare

We have preached good and love for millennia and look at how we are reduced, maybe if we start preaching evil, things will improve.
Carl William Brown

Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove.
William Shakespeare

Love bears it out even to the edge of doom.
William Shakespeare

Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs. Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers eyes. Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers tears. What is it else? A madness most discreet, a choking gall and a preserving sweet.
William Shakespeare

Love is too young to know what conscience is.
William Shakespeare

Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.
William Shakespeare

Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.
William Shakespeare

My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep. The more I give thee, the more I have, For both are infinite
William Shakespeare

Self-love, is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting.
William Shakespeare

She’s gone. I am abused, and my relief must be to loathe her.
William Shakespeare

The course of true love never did run smooth.
William Shakespeare

They do not love that do not show their love. The course of true love never did run smooth. Love is a familiar. Love is a devil. There is no evil angel but Love.
William Shakespeare

To say the truth, reason and love keep little company together now-a-days.
William Shakespeare

We that are true lovers run into strange capers.
William Shakespeare

When Love speaks, the voice of all the gods makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.
William Shakespeare

Fond as we are of our loved ones, there comes at times during their absence an unexplained peace.
Anna Howard Shaw

First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity: no really self-respecting woman would take advantage of it.
George Bernard Shaw

Love is free; to promise for ever to love the same woman is not less absurd than to promise to believe the same creed; such a vow in both cases excludes us from all inquiry.
Percy Bysshe Shelley

All love is sweet, Given or returned. Common as light is love, And its familiar voice wearies not ever. They who inspire us most are fortunate, As I am now: but those who feel it most Are happier still.
Percy Bysshe Shelley

True love in this differs from gold and clay, That to divide is not to take away.
Percy Bysshe Shelley

The hottest love has the coldest end.
Socrates

When desire, having rejected reason and overpowered judgment which leads to right, is set in the direction of the pleasure which beauty can inspire, and when again under the influence of its kindred desires it is moved with violent motion towards the beauty of corporeal forms, it acquires a surname from this very violent motion, and is called love.
Socrates

One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life; that word is love.
Sophocles

Love is life’s end, but never ending. Love is life’s wealth, never spent, but ever spending. Love’s life’s reward, rewarded in rewarding.
Herbert Spencer

God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.
St. Augustine

Love is the beauty of the soul.
St. Augustine

Love, and do what you like.
St. Augustine

What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.
St. Augustine

What I needed most was to love and to be loved, eager to be caught. Happily I wrapped those painful bonds around me; and sure enough, I would be lashed with the red-hot pokers of jealousy, by suspicions and fear, by bursts of anger and quarrels.
St. Augustine

Let no one believe that he has received the divine kiss, if he knows the truth without loving it or loves it without understanding it. But blessed is that kiss whereby not only is God recognized but also the Father is loved; for there is never full knowledge without perfect love.
St. Bernard

Love seeks no cause beyond itself and no fruit; it is its own fruit, its own enjoyment. I love because I love; I love in order that I may love.
St. Bernard

Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time; effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end.
Anne Germain De Stael

Famous quotes and aphorisms on love

Love is a symbol of eternity. It wipes out all sense of time, destroying all memory of a beginning and all fear of an end.
Anne Germain De Stael

Love is the whole history of a woman’s life, it is but an episode in a man’s.
Anne Germain De Stael

We cease loving ourselves if no one loves us.
Anne Germain De Stael

Nothing has happened today except kindness.
Gertrude Stein

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.
Oscar Wilde

He only may chastise who loves.
Rabindranath Tagore

He who wants to do good knocks at the gate; he who loves finds the gate open.
Rabindranath Tagore

Let my love like sunlight surround you, yet give you illumined freedom.
Rabindranath Tagore

We live in the world when we love it.
Rabindranath Tagore

Who is wise in love, love most, say least.
Lord Alfred Tennyson

‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
Lord Alfred Tennyson

If by love we mean loving one person and hating many others at the same time, then we haven’t understood much.
Carl William Brown

Love is the only gold.
Lord Alfred Tennyson

Be gentle to all and stem with yourself.
St. Teresa of Avila

It is certainly a strange type of love that is spread among the human species, it makes you love one person, but it makes you hate many others at the same time.
Carl William Brown

It is here, my daughters, that love is to be found — not hidden away in corners but in the midst of occasions of sin. And believe me, although we may more often fail and commit small lapses, our gain will be incomparably the greater.
St. Teresa of Avila

To love and win is the best thing. To love and lose, the next best.
William M. Thackeray

Love must be as much a light, as it is a flame.
Henry David Thoreau

Misfortunes occur only when a man is false… Events, circumstances, etc., have their origin in ourselves. They spring from seeds which we have sown.
Henry David Thoreau

There is no remedy for love than to love more.
Henry David Thoreau

Love is the strange bewilderment that overtakes one person on account of another person.
James Thurber

The feelings of love and passion are well-known to be irrational and coincidentally they are typical of man.
Carl William Brown

Love is what you’ve been through with somebody.
James Thurber

I believe that the reason of life is for each of us simply to grow in love.
Count Leo Tolstoy

We do not love people so much for the good they have done us, as for the good we have done them.
Count Leo Tolstoy

For it is the suffering flesh, it is suffering, it is death, that lovers perpetuate upon the earth. Love is at once the brother, son, and father of death, which is its sister, mother, and daughter. And thus it is that in the depth of love there is a depth of eternal despair, out of which springs hope and consolation.
Miguel De Unamuno

It is sad not to be loved, but it is much sadder not to be able to love.
Miguel De Unamuno

As Plato sometimes speaks of the divine love, it arises not out of indigency, as created love does, but out of fullness and redundancy; it is an overflowing fountain, and that love which descends upon created being is a free efflux from the almighty source of love; and it is well pleasing to him that those creatures which he hath made should partake of it.
Author Unknown

Know the self to be sitting in the chariot, the body to be the chariot, the intellect the charioteer, and the mind the reins.
Veda Upanishads

Love is something eternal; the aspect may change, but not the essence.
Vincent Van Gogh

The church has always preached “love of your neighbor” but I have not seen all this love all around.
Carl William Brown

The best way to know God is to love many things.
Vincent Van Gogh

The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others.
Vincent Van Gogh

It is not love that should be depicted as blind, but self-love.
Francois-Marie Arouet de Voltaire

Love conquers all; let us surrender to Love.
Virgil

Love is a canvas furnished by Nature and embroidered by imagination.
Francois-Marie Arouet de Voltaire

Self-love is the instrument of our preservation.
Francois-Marie Arouet de Voltaire

Fantasy love is much better than reality love. Never doing it is very exciting. The most exciting attractions are between two opposites that never meet.
Andy Warhol

A pity beyond all telling is hid in the heart of love.
William Butler Yeats

I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious.
Walt Whitman

One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.
Oscar Wilde

There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.
Oscar Wilde

There’s nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It’s a thing no married man knows anything about.
Oscar Wilde

When a man has once loved a woman, he will do anything for her, except continue to love her.
Oscar Wilde

When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one’s self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.
Oscar Wilde

Yet each man kills the thing he loves. From all let this be heard: some do it with a bitter look, some with a flattering word. The coward does it with a kiss. the brave man with the sword.
Oscar Wilde

For love… has two faces; one white, the other black; two bodies; one smooth, the other hairy. It has two hands, two feet, two tails, two, indeed, of every member and each one is the exact opposite of the other. Yet, so strictly are they joined together that you cannot separate them.
Virginia Woolf

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100 Great quotes on Love

Great proverbs on love

Saint Valentine’s Day

Find out what Shakespeare thought on love

reading our Dictionary of Shakespeare quotes

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