Famous Literary Quotes
"The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it."
- The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,
Or close the wall up with our English dead!
- William Shakespeare 1564-1616. Henry V, Act III, Scene 1, 1599
"To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish's. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause'
- William Shakespeare 1564-1616 Hamlet, Act III, Scene I, 1601
"Man is his own star, and the soul that can
Render an honest and a perfect man
Commands all light, all influence, all fate."
- John Fletcher 1579-1625. The Honest Man's Fortune, Epilogue, 1647.
"But at my back I always hear Time's winged Chariot hurrying near."
- Andrew Marvell 1621-1678
"Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and fans the bonfire"
- Francois le Duc de la Rochefoucauld, 1613-1680
"Eyeless in Gaza at the Mill with slaves"
- John Milton 1608-1674. Samson Agonistes, 1671
"Tyger! Tyger! burning bright'
In the forest of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful
symmetry?
- William Blake 1757-1827. 'The Tyger', Songs of Experience 1794
"To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.:
- William Blake 1757-1827. Auguries of Innocence 1803.
"My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky"
- William Wordsworth 1770 - 1850. Lyrical Ballards, 1802
" All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others. "
- George Orwell, Animal Farm