Percy Bysshe Shelley

"Familiar acts are beautiful through love."

- Percy Bysshe Shelley, poet

George Bernard Shaw

"Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable."

- George Bernard Shaw, critic and playwright

Oscar Wilde

"Who, being loved, is poor?"

- Oscar Wilde, poet, novelist, dramatist and critic

William Shakespeare

"Give me that man
That is not passion's slave and I will wear him
In my heart's core."

- 'Hamlet' by William Shakespeare

Have decided to do weekly quotes from Hamlet for a little while, as we're studying it at the moment, so think it might be useful. Enjoy :)

Billy Joel

"Honesty is such a lonely word
Everyone is so untrue."

- Billy Joel, 'Honesty'

Benjamin Franklin

"If you would be loved, love and be lovable."

- Benjamin Franklin

Jennifer Johnston

"Real friendship admits recognition of the ugly as well as the beautiful."

- 'How Many Miles To Babylon?' by Jennifer Johnston

Sue Monk Kidd

"Then reality set in, like it always did."

- 'The Secret Life of Bees' by Sue Monk Kidd

William Wordsworth

"O'er my thoughts
There hung a darkness, call it solitude
Or blank desertion. No familiar shapes
Remained, no pleasant images of trees,
Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields;
But huge and mighty forms, that do not live
Like living men, moved slowly through the mind
By day, and were a trouble to my dreams."

- 'The Stolen Boat' from 'The Prelude' by William Wordsworth

Anne Frank

"Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy."

- Anne Frank, 'Diary of a Young Girl'

Anatole France

"An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't."

- Anatole France, poet, journalist, novelist

The Fray

"We never know what's right without pain."

- The Fray, 'All At Once'

Tryon Edwards

"The first step to improvement, whether mental, moral, or religious, is to know ourselves--our weakness, errors, deficiencies, and sins, that, by divine grace, we may overcome and turn from them all."

-Tryon Edwards, theologian

J. K. Rowling

"Age is foolish and forgetful when it underestimates youth."

- J. K. Rowling, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince"

Publilius Syrus

"Depend not on fortune, but on conduct."

- Publilius Syrus, ancient Roman writer

W. B. Yeats

"We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart's grown brutal from the fare;
More substance in our enmities
Than in our love; O honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the stare."

- 'The Stare's Nest by my Window' from 'Meditations in the Time of Civil War' by W. B. Yeats

In this poem, Yeats is calling for all of Ireland to come together instead of fighting amongst each other, written as it was during the Civil War. In this particular quote, Yeats is speaking of the "fantasies" of freedom and independence that, although noble in intent, have made the heart "brutal" in its attempts to make these visions reality. Yeats is saying that people have become more focused on their opposition in the Civil War than on their love of Ireland itself. Yeats is appealing to the Irish people to "build" rather than break, now that they finally have their independence.

Kin Hubbard

"Flattery won't hurt you if you don't swallow it."

- Kin Hubbard, cartoonist, humourist and journalist

Robert Frost

"Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better."

- 'Birches' by Robert Frost

Dashboard Confessional

"Don't wait, the lights will flash and fade away,
The days will pass you by, don't wait."

- Dashboard Confessional, 'Don't Wait'

Laurence J. Peter

"There is no stigma attached to recognizing a bad decision in time to install a better one."

-Laurence J. Peter, teacher and writer

William Shakespeare

"And other strains of woe, which now seem woe,
Compared with loss of thee, will not seem so."

- William Shakespeare, playwright and poet (Sonnet 90)

Emily Dickinson

"Heavenly Hurt, it gives us -
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the Meanings, are -"

- 'There's a certain Slant of light' by Emily Dickinson

Sophocles

"Count no man happy till he dies, free of pain at last."

- 'Oedipus the King' by Sophocles

Ambrose Bierce

"Philosophy, n. A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing."

- "The Devil's Dictionary" by Ambrose Bierce, journalist, author and satirist

Francis Bacon

"Death is a friend of ours; and he that is not ready to entertain him is not at home."

- Francis Bacon, philosopher, statesman, scientist, author, lawyer

The Corrs

"I know I'm standing on borrowed heaven."

- The Corrs, 'Borrowed Heaven'

Dave Barry

"We Americans live in a nation where the medical-care system is second to none in the world, unless you count maybe 25 or 30 little scuzzball countries like Scotland that we could vaporize in seconds if we felt like it."

- Dave Barry, author and columnist

Patrick Kavanagh

"O I loved too much and by such by such is happiness thrown away"

- 'On Raglan Road' by Patrick Kavanagh