The Quotations Archive currently contains 1744 quotations.

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The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.

-- James Branch Cabell, The Silver Stallion

Food, one assumes, provides nourishment; but Americans eat it fully aware that small amounts of poison have been added to improve its appearance and delay its putrefaction.

-- John Cage

I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.

-- John Cage

Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep.

-- Albert Camus

You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.

-- Albert Camus

You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.

-- Al Capone

Abstract art: a product of the untalented sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.

-- Al Capp

Have you ever noticed? Anybody going slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac.

-- George Carlin

What does it mean to pre-board? Do you get on before you get on?

-- George Carlin

Teach a parrot the terms "supply and demand" and you've got an economist.

-- Thomas Carlyle

If you can't sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there and worrying. It's the worry that gets you, not the loss of sleep.

-- Dale Carnegie

You have it easily in your power to increase the sum total of this world's happiness now. How? By giving a few words of sincere appreciation to someone who is lonely or discouraged. Perhaps you will forget tomorrow the kind words you say today, but the recipient may cherish them over a lifetime.

-- Dale Carnegie

You have to walk carefully in the beginning of love; the running across fields into your lover's arms can only come later when you're sure they won't laugh if you trip.

-- Jonathan Carroll, Outside the Dog Museum

"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!"

-- Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop.

-- Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary.

-- Thomas Carruthers

Anytime four New Yorkers get into a cab together without arguing, a bank robbery has just taken place.

-- Johnny Carson

If variety is the spice of life, marriage is the big can of leftover Spam.

-- Johnny Carson

Just buy a box of popcorn and a Coca-Cola and sit back and watch.

-- James Carville, Clinton advisor, offering advice for Democrats on the term-limits vote in the House

Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock.

-- Wynn Catlin, also attributed to Will Rogers

When Michelangelo finished the painting of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling, he spent the rest of his life trying to remove the paint that had poured into his sleeve.

-- Francois Cavanna

I don't even butter my bread; I consider that cooking.

-- Katherine Cebrian

Better to have loved a short man than never to have loved a tall.

-- David Chambless

The most wasted day of all is that in which we have not laughed.

-- Sebastian Roch Nicolas Chamfort

Whoever is not a misanthrope at forty can never have loved mankind.

-- Sebastian Roch Nicolas Chamfort

The person who does not enjoy his own company is usually right.

-- Coco Chanel

In the end, everything is a gag.

-- Charlie Chaplin

If you are afraid of loneliness, don't marry.

-- Chekhov

Doctors are the same as lawyers; the only difference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you too.

-- Anton Chekhov

The trouble with some women is that they get all excited about nothing -- and then marry him.

-- Cher

Be wiser than other people, if you can, but do not tell them so.

-- Lord Chesterfield

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

-- G. K. Chesterton

Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.

-- G. K. Chesterton

Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.

-- G. K. Chesterton

Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.

-- G. K. Chesterton

I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.

-- G. K. Chesterton

I still believe in liberalism today as much as I ever did, but, oh, there was a happy time when I believed in liberals...

-- G. K. Chesterton

Journalism consists largely in saying "Lord Jones died" to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.

-- G. K. Chesterton

Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.

-- G. K. Chesterton

Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.

-- G. K. Chesterton

Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.

-- G. K. Chesterton

Progress is the mother of all problems.

-- G. K. Chesterton

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.

-- G. K. Chesterton

The coziness between church and state is good for the state and bad for the church.

-- G. K. Chesterton

The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.

-- G. K. Chesterton

The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.

-- G. K. Chesterton

Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction, for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it.

-- G. K. Chesterton

We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next door neighbour.

-- G. K. Chesterton

I'm worried that the universe will soon need replacing. It's not holding a charge.

-- Edward Chilton

An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have; the older she gets the more interested he is in her.

-- Agatha Christie

Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has not heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.

-- Winston Churchill

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

-- Winston Churchill

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.

-- Winston Churchill

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.

-- Winston Churchill

The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.

-- Winston Churchill

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

-- Winston Churchill

The optimist sees opportunity in every danger; the pessimist sees danger in every opportunity.

-- Winston Churchill

This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which we shall not put.

-- Winston Churchill

We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.

-- Winston Churchill

Well, dinner would have been splendid... if the wine had been as cold as the soup, the beef as rare as the service, the brandy as old as the fish, and the maid as willing as the Duchess.

-- Winston Churchill

As always, victory finds a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan.

-- Count Galeazzo Ciano, The Ciano Diaries

A dollar saved is a quarter earned.

-- John Ciardi

A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.

-- John Ciardi

You don't have to suffer to be a poet; adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.

-- John Ciardi

The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn.

-- Cicero

The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.

-- Tom Clancy

It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God, but to create him.

-- Arthur C. Clarke

Sir, I would rather be right than be President.

-- Henry Clay, Speech, 1850, referring to the Compromise Measure

America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual intervention of civilization.

-- George Clemenceau

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.

-- George Clemenceau

I love cats because I love my home and after a while they become its visible soul.

-- Jean Cocteau

We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like?

-- Jean Cocteau

Nothing can so alienate a voter from the political system as backing a winning candidate.

-- Mark B. Cohen

He who laughs last is generally the last to get the joke.

-- Terry Cohen

Why do grandparents and grandchildren get along so well? They have the same enemy-- the mother.

-- Claudette Colbert

The most happy marriage I can imagine to myself would be the union of a deaf man to a blind woman.

-- S. T. Coleridge

... I am indebted to the cat for a particular kind of honorable deceit, for a greater control over myself, for a characteristic aversion to brutal sounds, and for the need to keep silent for long periods of time.

-- Colette

Music is the art of thinking with sounds.

-- Jules Combarieu

Heav'n hath no rage like love to hatred turn'd, Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn'd.

-- William Congreve

In the early sixties, we were strong, we were virulent...

-- John Connally, Secretary of Treasury under Richard Nixon, in an early 70s speech, as reported in a contemporary "American Scholar"

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.

-- Rich Cook

I have noticed that nothing I have never said ever did me any harm.

-- Calvin Coolidge

The male is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness, can be trained to do most things.

-- Jilly Cooper

The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, "Is there a meaning to music?" My answer would be, "Yes." And "Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?" My answer to that would be, "No."

-- Aaron Copland

A cement mixer collided with a prison van on the Kingston Pass. Motorists are asked to be on the lookout for 16 hardened criminals.

-- Ronnie Corbett

Marriage is like a bank account. You put it in, you take it out, you lose interest.

-- Irwin Corey

Don't spend $2 to dry-clean a shirt. Donate it to the Salvation Army instead. They'll clean it and put it on a hanger. Next morning buy it back for 75 cents.

-- Billiam Coronel

What if it was cats who invented technology... would they have tv shows starring rubber sqeak toys?

-- Douglas Coupland

Live out of your imagination, not your history.

-- Stephen Covey

Freedom is a contagious blessing.

-- Stephen Covington

I've sometimes thought of marrying, and then I've thought again.

-- Noel Coward

Flowers are words which even a baby can understand.

-- Arthur C. Coxe

There is no future in any job. The future lies in the man who holds the job.

-- George Crane

Goodbye, Everybody!

-- Hart Crane, poet, who committed suicide by jumping overboard during a steamship voyage.

The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting.

-- Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage

They were doing a full back shot of me in a swimsuit and I thought, Oh my God, I have to be so brave. See, every woman hates herself from behind.

-- Cindy Crawford, supermodel

To expect defeat is nine-tenths of defeat itself.

-- Francis Crawford

Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell.

-- Joan Crawford

The trouble with children is that they are not returnable.

-- Quentin Crisp

A day without a pun is a day without sunshine; there is gloom for improvement.

-- John S. Crosbie

What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.

-- Crowfoot, Blackfoot warrior and orator, 1890

A friend is one who knows us, but loves us anyway.

-- Fr. Jerome Cummings

Love is shown in your deeds, not in your words.

-- Fr. Jerome Cummings

There are not enough Indians in the world to defeat the Seventh Cavalry.

-- George Armstrong Custer

I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart.

-- ee cummings

The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.

-- ee cummings

and what i want to know is how do you like your blueeyed boy Mister Death

-- ee cummings, Buffalo Bill