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Miscellaneous quotes

973 quotes from 439 people

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There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse! As I have often found in travelling in a stagecoach, that it is often a comfort to shift one’s position, and be bruised in a new place.
Washington Irving1783–1859Tales of a Traveler (1824), Preface, p. 7
- Change
- Comedy
I’m not myself⁠—I’m somebody else⁠—that’s me yonder-no⁠—that’s somebody else, got into my shoes⁠—I was myself last night, but I fell asleep on the mountain, and they’ve changed my gun, and everything’s changed, and I’m changed, and I can’t tell what’s my name, or who I am!
Washington Irving1783–1859Rip Van Winkle (1819)In context
- Change
Today’s students can put dope in their veins or hope in their brains. If they can conceive it and believe it, they can achieve it. They must know it is not their aptitude, but their attitude, that will determine their altitude.
Jesse Jackson1941–2026
I’m totally at home on the stage. That’s where I live. That’s where I was born. That’s where I’m safe.
Michael Jackson1958–2009
I’m just like anyone. I cut and I bleed. And I embarass easily.
Michael Jackson1958–2009Press statement (21 July 2003), quoted in “Jackson attacks music piracy bill” in BBC News (22 July 2003)
He wanted to show that fate ruled people’s lives, and that those who interfered with it did so to their sorrow.
W. W. Jacobs1863–1943The Monkey’s Paw (1902)In context
- Life & Death
- Luck
A tradition is kept alive only by something being added to it.
Henry James1843–1916“Robert Louis Stevenson,” Century Magazine (April 1888)
- Change
Real culture lives by sympathies and admirations, not by dislikes and disdain — under all misleading wrappings it pounces unerringly upon the human core.
William James1842–1910Memories and Studies (1911)
We patch and tinker more than we renew. The novelty soaks in; it stains the ancient mass; but it is also tinged by what absorbs it.
William James1842–1910Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907), Lecture V, Pragmatism and Common Sense
- Change
I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
Thomas Jefferson1743–1826Letter to John Adams (1 August 1816)
I have ever deemed it more honorable and more profitable, too, to set a good example than to follow a bad one.
Thomas Jefferson1743–1826
Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.
Thomas Jefferson1743–1826
Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.
Thomas Jefferson1743–1826Jefferson’s First Inaugural Address (1801)
Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.
Thomas Jefferson1743–1826Letter to Dr. James Currie (28 January 1786) Lipscomb & Bergh 18:ii
- Journalism
I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
Thomas Jefferson1743–1826On members of the clergy who sought to establish some form of “official” Christianity in the U.S. government. Letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush (23 September 1800)