Alex’s Favorite Quotes

Find some of my favorite quotes, mostly from literature. They make me laugh or make me think. A few sum up my philosophy on life.

Chinua Achebe

A woman who began cooking before another must have more broken utensils.

Arrow of God

A man who visits a craftsman at work finds a sullen host

Arrow of God

Douglas Adams

Wherever he touched himself, he encountered a pain. After a short while he worked out that this is because it was his hand that was hurting.

Life, the Universe, and Everything

Louisa May Alcott

One of the sweet uses of adversity, is the genuine satisfaction which comes from hearty work of head or hand; and to the inspiration of necessity, we owe half the wise, beautiful, and useful blessings of the world.

Little Women

Isaac Asimov

Nothing is really irreplaceable. I have some personal items I value for their association with my past life, but if they are gone, they are gone.

Hari Seldon, Foundation

Edgar Rice Burroughs

If the sensations I endured during the next few minutes were fear, then may God help the coward, for cowardice is of surety its own punishment.

John Carter, A Princess of Mars

Arthur Conan Doyle

It is better to learn wisdom late than never to learn it at all.

Sherlock Holmes, The Man With The Twisted Lip

Thomas Edison

(On religion) What we need to do is search for fundamentals, not reiterations of traditions born in days when men knew even less than we do now

Albert Einstein

If you can’t explain it simply- you don’t understand it well enough.

We all think we’re so smart until we try to operate someone else’s shower.

Victor Hugo

It is the setting sun which we mistake for the dawn.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Isolation aggrandizes everything.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Take away the press: heresy is enervated.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

It is idle, having planted an acorn in the morning to expect that afternoon to sit in the shade of an oak.

Wind, Sand, and Stars

William Shakespeare

BOATSWAIN
What cares these roarers for the name of king? To cabin: silence! trouble us not.


GONZALO
Good, yet remember whom thou hast aboard.


BOATSWAIN
None that I more love than myself.

The Tempest

Jules Verne

We must look upon what is to occur as having already occurred, and see nothing but the present in the future, for the future is but the present a little further on.

Dr. Samuel Ferguson, Five Weeks in a Balloon

The man who was born to be hung will never be drowned.

Dr. Samuel Ferguson, Five Weeks in a Balloon