Gibarian > Gibarian's Quotes

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
― Mark Twain

“I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”
― Mark Twain

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
― Mark Twain

“A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
― Mark Twain

“All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure. ”
― Mark Twain

“Books are for people who wish they were somewhere else.”
― Mark Twain

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“Time spent arguing is, oddly enough, almost never wasted.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian

“I had become too accustomed to the pseudo-Left new style, whereby if your opponent thought he had identified your lowest possible motive, he was quite certain that he had isolated the only real one. This vulgar method, which is now the norm and the standard in much non-Left journalism as well, is designed to have the effect of making any noisy moron into a master analyst.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“It's often a bad sign when people defend themselves against charges which haven't been made.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left

“The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian

“And the pleasures and rewards of the intellect are inseparable from angst, uncertainty, conflict and even despair.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian

“Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”
― Oscar Wilde

“You don't love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.”
― oscar wilde

“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.”
― Oscar Wilde (attributed to)

“If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.”
― Mark Twain

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
― Mark Twain

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
― Mark Twain

“Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.”
― Mark Twain

“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.”
― Mark Twain

“Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.”
― Mark Twain

“I must have a prodigious amount of mind; it takes me as much as a week, sometimes, to make it up!”
― Mark Twain

“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.”
― Laurence J. Peter, The Peter Principle

“I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”
― Mark Twain

“Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, sea-shores, and mountains; and thou too art wont to desire such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself. For nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquility; and I affirm that tranquility is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind. Constantly then give to thyself this retreat, and renew thyself; and let thy principles be brief and fundamental, which, as soon as thou shalt recur to them, will be sufficient to cleanse the soul completely, and to send thee back free from all discontent with the things to which thou returnest. For with what art thou discontented? With the badness of men? Recall to thy mind this conclusion, that rational animals exist for one another, and that to endure is a part of justice, and that men do wrong involuntarily; and consider how many already, after mutual enmity, suspicion, hatred, and fighting, have been stretched dead, reduced to ashes; and be quiet at last.- But perhaps thou art dissatisfied with that which is assigned to thee out of the universe.- Recall to thy recollection this alternative; either there is providence or atoms, fortuitous concurrence of things; or remember the arguments by which it has been proved that the world is a kind of political community, and be quiet at last.- But perhaps corporeal things will still fasten upon thee.- Consider then further that the mind mingles not with the breath, whether moving gently or violently, when it has once drawn itself apart and discovered its own power, and think also of all that thou hast heard and assented to about pain and pleasure, and be quiet at last.- But perhaps the desire of the thing called fame will torment thee.- See how soon everything is forgotten, and look at the chaos of infinite time on each side of the present, and the emptiness of applause, and the changeableness and want of judgement in those who pretend to give praise, and the narrowness of the space within which it is circumscribed, and be quiet at last. For the whole earth is a point, and how small a nook in it is this thy dwelling, and how few are there in it, and what kind of people are they who will praise thee.”
― Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius

“Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever. It is a meaningless word, too. The only difference between a caprice and a life-long passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“When one's head is gone one doesn't weep over one's hair!”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
― Henry David Thoreau