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From Flashcardlet > Literary Quotes and Phrases > Flashcards

Literary Quotes and Phrases Flashcards

1
Q

When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.

A

Claudius in Shakespeare play, Hamlet, Act IV, Scene V. Claudius meant that, when bad incidents occurs, it doesn’t happen alone, and many other bad happenings occurs simultaneously to contribute to human tragedy.

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2
Q

Ignorance is the parent of fear.

A

Herman Melville, Moby Dick

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3
Q

Expectation is the root of all heartache.

A

Does not really appear in any of William Shakespeare’s works.

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4
Q

Do not go gentle into that good night.

A

Dylan Thomas, Welsh poet

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5
Q

What is essential is invisible to the eye.

A

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

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6
Q

The course of true love never did run smooth.

A

William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

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7
Q

The best way out is always through.

A

Robert Frost

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8
Q

Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.

A

William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Act II Scene 5

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9
Q

To succeed, you do need a certain fanaticism; there’s so much to know and so little time. Of course the time comes when you realize that you haven’t merely been specializing in something – something has been specializing in you. You become a kind of instrument, an instrument that cuts money out of people, or fame out of the world. And it finally makes you stupid. Power can do that.

A

Arthur Miller, The Price

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10
Q

My whole life is on the tip of my tongue. Empty pages for the no longer young.

A

Indigo Girls “Virginia Woolf”

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11
Q

To err is human; to forgive, divine.

A

Alexander Pope, an 18th century English poet.

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12
Q

There is only one unpardonable sin - deliberate cruelty.

A

Truman Capote, The Thanksgiving Visitor

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13
Q

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth writing.

A

Benjamin Franklin

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14
Q

More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.

A

Saint Teresa of Ávila - Truman Capote’s Answered Prayers

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15
Q

There’s only one thing worse than promises unkept, that’s promises kept.

A

Harper Lee about Truman Capote’s success after In Cold Blood

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16
Q

In society, a great friendship does not amount to much.

A

Marcel Proust

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17
Q

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

A

William Shakespeare Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2
(Spoken by Hamlet)

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18
Q

O Lord that lends me life, lend me a heart replete with thankfulness!

A

William Shakespeare,Henry VI, Part 2 Act 1, Scene 1

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19
Q

Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.

A

Marcel Proust

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20
Q

Natural intelligence intends that every living thing become the highest form of itself and designs us accordingly.

A

Marianne WIlliamson

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21
Q

It’s fun to have fun, but you have to know how.

A

Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat

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22
Q

Countrymen, lend me your ears.

A

William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar (Mark Antony address to the citizens of Rome)

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23
Q

The evil that men do lives after them.

A

William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar (Mark Antony speech)

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24
Q

That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.

A

Henry David Thoreau

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25
Q

What a piece of work is a man!

A

William Shakespeare, Hamlet soliloquy

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26
Q

There is loneliness in the world so great that you can see it in the movement of a clock’s hand.

A

Charles Bukowski

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27
Q

We are like roses that never bothered to bloom when we should have bloomed and it is as if the sun has become disgusted with waiting.

A

Charles Bukowski

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28
Q

Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.

A

An Elizabethan witticism

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29
Q

A heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others.

A

L. Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz
The Wizard tells the Tin Man

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30
Q

I made my bed. I’ll lie in it.

A

Courtney Love lyrics

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31
Q

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.

A

Anaïs Nin

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32
Q

Yours is the light by which my spirit’s born: - you are my sun, my moon, and all my stars.

A

ee cummings

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33
Q

And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.

A

John Steinbeck, “East of Eden”

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34
Q

All war is a symptom of man’s failure as a thinking animal.

A

John Steinbeck, “Once There Was a War”

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35
Q

And just what is your duty? The demands of the day.

A

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (1796)

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36
Q

The nature of bad news infects the teller.

A

William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra

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37
Q

For he today that sheds his blood with me, shall be my brother.

A

William Shakespeare,
Henry V
(band of brothers speech) written in 1599

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38
Q

We are waves of the same sea, leaves of the same tree, flowers of the same garden.

A

Seneca

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39
Q

There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it ill behooves any of us to find fault with the rest of us.
There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it behooves us all not to talk about the rest of us. -

There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us,
it doesn’t behoove any of us to speak evil of the rest of us.

A

James Truslow Adams, American writer and historian

Robert Louis Stevenson, attributed to him but it predates him considerably.

Edgar Cayce, American attributed clairvoyant

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40
Q

Mothers see the angel in us because the angel is there.

A

Booth Tarkington, Seventeen

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41
Q

Whatever does not pretend at all has style enough.

A

Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons

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42
Q

Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.

A

Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

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43
Q

People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.

A

Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird

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44
Q

Me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.

A

Toni Morrison, Beloved

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45
Q

Many are the wonders of the world, and none so wonderful as man.

A

Sophocles

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46
Q

Your absence has gone through me like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color.

A

W.S. Merwin, an American poet who wrote more than fifty books of poetry and prose and produced many works in translation.

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47
Q

You can’t win an argument. You can’t because if you lose it, you lose it; and if you win it, you lose it.

A

Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People

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48
Q

To climb steep hills requires slow pace at first.

A

William Shakespeare

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49
Q

Everything that dies never really goes. In little ways, it all stays.

A

Ashley Poston, The Dead Romantics

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50
Q

The past is never dead. It’s not even past.

A

William Faulkner

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51
Q

Can you make no use of your discontent?

A

William Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing
Act1, Scene 3

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52
Q

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil

A

William Shakespeare
Hamlet, Act III, Scene I [To be, or not to be]

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53
Q

You live out the confusions until they become clear.

A

Anaïs Nin

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54
Q

Every act of communication is a miracle of translation.

A

Ken Liu, The Paper Menagerie

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55
Q

What we remember is often a choice.

A

Lindsay M. Chervinsky, author of “Mourning the Presidents

56
Q

The Soul selects her own Society —
Then — shuts the Door —
To her divine Majority —

A

Emily Dickinson’s “The Soul selects her own Society” was first published posthumously in 1890, long after Dickinson wrote the poem in 1862.

57
Q

Wisely, and slow. They stumble that run fast.

A

William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 3

58
Q

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…

A

Charles Dickens — “A Tale of Two Cities”

59
Q

I have been bent and broken, but — I hope — into a better shape.

A

Charles Dickens — “Great Expectations”

60
Q

Trifles make the sum of life.

A

Charles Dickens — “David Copperfield”

61
Q

Please, sir, I want some more.

A

Charles Dickens — “Oliver Twist”

62
Q

No one is useless in this world… who lightens the burden of it for any one else.

A

Charles Dickens — “Our Mutual Friend”

63
Q

It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.

A

Charles Dickens
— “A Christmas Carol”

64
Q

We need never be ashamed of our tears.

A

Charles Dickens
— “Great Expectations”

65
Q

Family not only need to consist of merely those whom we share blood, but also for those whom we’d give blood.

A

Charles Dickens
— “Nicholas Nickleby”

66
Q

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.

A

Charles Dickens
— “A Tale of Two Cities”

67
Q

Fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship; and pass the rosy wine.

A

Charles Dickens— “The Old Curiosity Shop”

68
Q

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

A

Charles Dickens
— “David Copperfield”

69
Q

To weep is to make less the depth of grief.

A

William Shakespeare
1592 Richard. Henry VI PartThree, act 2, sc.1, l.85-6.

70
Q

Yet he hath ever but slenderly known himself,

A

Regan says of her father in “King Lear.”

71
Q

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

A

William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part II, Act III, Scene 1

72
Q

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought / I summon up remembrance of things past.

A

William Shakespeare, Sonnet 30

73
Q

There is no document of culture which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.

A

Walter Benjamin, Section 7 of “Theses on the Philosophy of History”

74
Q

To have received the key to understanding shame does not give the power to erase it.

A

Annie Ernaux’s “A Girl’s Story”

75
Q

Hell is empty and all the devils are here.

A

William Shakespeare, The Tempest

76
Q

Let the flesh instruct the mind.

A

Anne Rice

77
Q

When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.

A

Hamlet, Act IV, Scene V (Claudius)

78
Q

Set wide the window. Let me drink the day.

A

Edith Wharton

79
Q

We know what we are, but know not what we may be.

A

William Shakespeare, Hamlet Act IV, Scene 5 and is spoken by Ophelia.

80
Q

The humiliated male is the Status Game’s most lethal player.

A

Will Storr, The Status Game

81
Q

The experience of humiliation is essentially “the annihilation of the self.

A

Will Storr, The Status Game

82
Q

Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.

A

William Shakespeare

83
Q

You are your best thing.

A

Toni Morrison, Beloved

84
Q

Live, and be happy, and make others so.

A

Mary Shelley

85
Q

You don’t need to be an expert in seduction to know that people want what they can’t have and fantasy is more seductive than reality.

A

Mona Lazar, Medium

86
Q

Find out what they want and embody that. It has worked since the beginning of time.
If it’s really who you are, this will be a love made in heaven. if you’re faking… well, the seduction goal is accomplished and you’d better watch out for the wrath of the person you fooled.

A

Mona Lazar, Medium

87
Q

When patriarchy makes monsters, sometimes the monsters bite back.

A

A.L. Kaplan

88
Q

Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.

A

William Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well

89
Q

Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.

A

Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass

90
Q

She was beautiful, but not like those girls in magazines. She was beautiful, for the way she thought. She was beautiful, for the sparkle in her eyes when she talked about something she loved. She was beautiful, for her ability to make other people smile, even if she was sad. No, she wasn’t beautiful for something as temporary as her looks. She was beautiful, deep down to her soul. She is beautiful.

A

F Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

91
Q

Never Let The Truth Get in the Way of a Good Story

A

Mark Twain

92
Q

We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.

A

Leo Tolstoy

93
Q

No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it for anyone else.

A

Charles Dickens, Doctor Marigola

94
Q

How the facts of American history have in the last half century been falsified because the nation was ashamed. The South was ashamed because it fought to perpetuate human slavery. The North was ashamed because it had to call in the black men to save the Union, abolish slavery and establish democracy.

A

W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America (1935).

95
Q

Shut the door, change the record, clean the house, shake off the dust. Stop being who you were, and change into who you are.

A

Paolo Coehlo

96
Q

Rare indeed is the legal victory — in court or legislature — that is not a careful byproduct of an emerging social consensus.

A

Sandra Day O’Connor, The Majesty of the Law: Reflections of a Supreme Court Justice

97
Q

There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.

A

Fyodor Dostoevski

98
Q

Ozymandias

A

a sonnet written by the English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1817.
In the poem, Shelley describes a crumbling statue of Ozymandias as a way to portray the transience of political power and to praise art’s ability to preserve the past.

99
Q

Here is what I would like for you to know: In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body—it is heritage.

A

Ta-Nehisi Coates, Letter to My Son

100
Q

And have brought humanity to the edge of oblivion: because they think they are white.

A

James Baldwin

101
Q

If you believe very strongly in something, stand up and fight for it.

A

Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

102
Q

Love is space and time made perceptible to the
heart.

A

Marcel Proust

103
Q

You’re seeking something, but at the same time, you are running away for all you’re worth.

A

Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

104
Q

Be with someone who makes you feel intoxicated when you’re sober, not someone you have to drink to forget.

A

J. Střelou, author

105
Q

The pain that you feel is only temporary. The growth that you experience will last forever.

A

Nicole Addison, Media Dietitian, Recipe Developer & Content Creator

106
Q

Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.

A

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

107
Q

The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.

A

Ernest Hemingway

108
Q

The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.

A

Ernest Hemingway

109
Q

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

A

Oscar Wilde

110
Q

To go wrong in one’ own way is better than to go right in someone else’s.

A

Fyodor Dostoevsky

111
Q

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.

A

Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan

112
Q

I desire very little, but the things I do consume me.

A

Beau Taplin, Desire

113
Q

In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

A

George Orwell

114
Q

If I have learned anything from experience, it is this: never underestimate how extraordinarily difficult it is to understand a situation from another person’s point of view.

A

Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries

115
Q

So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.

A

Jorge Luis Borges, After a While

116
Q

Opposition is True Friendship.

A

A poem by William Blake

117
Q

I didn’t fall in love, I rose in it.

A

Toni Morrison, Jazz

118
Q

Light is easy to love. Show me your darkness.

A

R.Queen, Darkchylde

119
Q

Money is like manure; it’s not worth a thing unless it’s spread around.

A

Thornton Wilder’s play, “The Matchmaker,” Brooke Astor often said used this quote.

120
Q

If you don’t step forward, you’re always in the same place.

A

Nora Roberts, Tears of the Moon

121
Q

The power of finding beauty in the humblest things makes home happy and life lovely.

A

Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

122
Q

If it is true for you, it is true for someone else, and you are no longer alone.

A

Colon Whitehead, The Nickel Boys

123
Q

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eve.

A

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

124
Q

If tribal thinking is original sin, then story is prayer.

A

Will Storr, The Science of Storytelling

125
Q

The heart isn’t heart-shaped.

A

Julián Barnes, A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters
(reflecting on how love doesn’t guarantee happiness or anything else)

126
Q

At a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie

A

Paulo Coehlo, The Alchemist

127
Q

If you look for perfection, you will never be satisfied.

A

Leo Tolstoy

128
Q

You must not try to make love definite. It is the divine accident of life.

A

Sherwood Anderson

129
Q

Words empowered by justice can never be silenced.

A

Isabel lbañez, Woven in Moonlight

130
Q

One does not get better but different and older and
that is always a pleasure.

A

Gertrude Stein

131
Q

Trimalchio

A

What does Trimalchio mean in The Great Gatsby?
Trimalchio was a character in the story Satyricon by Petronius. He was a man who gained power and wealth through determination and hard work. When he got his wealth, he threw big parties so he could impress his guests. This would be referred to in the text because Gatsby has done the same thing.

132
Q

I would rather have 30 minutes of wonderful than a
lifetime of nothing special.

A

Robert Harling, Steel Magnolias

133
Q

The price of privilege is the moral duty to act when one sees another person treated unfairly. And the least that a person in the dominant caste can do is not make the pain any worse.

A

Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

134
Q

What a piece of work is a man

A

Hamlet to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

135
Q
A
136
Q
A

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