Literary, Film, & Music Quotes & Phrases Flashcards
(169 cards)
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.
2
Q
Ignorance is the parent of fear.
A
Herman Melville, Moby Dick
3
Q
Expectation is the root of all heartache.
A
Does not really appear in any of William Shakespeare’s works.
4
Q
Do not go gentle into that good night.
A
Dylan Thomas, Welsh poet
5
Q
What is essential is invisible to the eye.
A
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
6
Q
The course of true love never did run smooth.
A
William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
7
Q
The best way out is always through.
A
Robert Frost
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
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
10
Q
My whole life is on the tip of my tongue. Empty pages for the no longer young.
A
Indigo Girls “Virginia Woolf”
11
Q
To err is human; to forgive, divine.
A
Alexander Pope, an 18th century English poet.
12
Q
There is only one unpardonable sin - deliberate cruelty.
A
Truman Capote, The Thanksgiving Visitor
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
14
Q
More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.
A
Saint Teresa of Ávila - Truman Capote’s Answered Prayers
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
16
Q
In society, a great friendship does not amount to much.
A
Marcel Proust
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)
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
19
Q
Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.
A
Marcel Proust
20
Q
Natural intelligence intends that every living thing become the highest form of itself and designs us accordingly.
A
Marianne WIlliamson
21
Q
It’s fun to have fun, but you have to know how.
A
Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat
22
Q
Countrymen, lend me your ears.
A
William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar (Mark Antony address to the citizens of Rome)
23
Q
The evil that men do lives after them.
A
William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar (Mark Antony speech)
24
Q
That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
A
Henry David Thoreau
25
What a piece of work is a man!
William Shakespeare, Hamlet soliloquy
26
There is loneliness in the world so great that you can see it in the movement of a clock's hand.
Charles Bukowski
27
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.
Charles Bukowski
28
Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.
An Elizabethan witticism
29
A heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others.
L. Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz
The Wizard tells the Tin Man
30
I made my bed. I'll lie in it.
Courtney Love lyrics
31
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.
Anaïs Nin
32
Yours is the light by which my spirit's born: - you are my sun, my moon, and all my stars.
ee cummings
33
And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.
John Steinbeck, “East of Eden”
34
All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal.
John Steinbeck, “Once There Was a War”
35
And just what is your duty? The demands of the day.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (1796)
36
The nature of bad news infects the teller.
William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra
37
For he today that sheds his blood with me, shall be my brother.
William Shakespeare,
Henry V
(band of brothers speech) written in 1599
38
We are waves of the same sea, leaves of the same tree, flowers of the same garden.
Seneca
39
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.
James Truslow Adams, American writer and historian
Robert Louis Stevenson, attributed to him but it predates him considerably.
Edgar Cayce, American attributed clairvoyant
40
Mothers see the angel in us because the angel is there.
Booth Tarkington, Seventeen
41
Whatever does not pretend at all has style enough.
Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons
42
Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.
Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
43
People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.
Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird
44
Me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.
Toni Morrison, Beloved
45
Many are the wonders of the world, and none so wonderful as man.
Sophocles
46
Your absence has gone through me like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color.
W.S. Merwin, an American poet who wrote more than fifty books of poetry and prose and produced many works in translation.
47
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.
Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People
48
To climb steep hills requires slow pace at first.
William Shakespeare
49
Everything that dies never really goes. In little ways, it all stays.
Ashley Poston, The Dead Romantics
50
The past is never dead. It's not even past.
William Faulkner
51
Can you make no use of your discontent?
William Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing
Act1, Scene 3
52
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil
William Shakespeare
Hamlet, Act III, Scene I [To be, or not to be]
53
You live out the confusions until they become clear.
Anaïs Nin
54
Every act of communication is a miracle of translation.
Ken Liu, The Paper Menagerie
55
What we remember is often a choice.
Lindsay M. Chervinsky, author of “Mourning the Presidents
56
The Soul selects her own Society —
Then — shuts the Door —
To her divine Majority —
Emily Dickinson's "The Soul selects her own Society" was first published posthumously in 1890, long after Dickinson wrote the poem in 1862.
57
Wisely, and slow. They stumble that run fast.
William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 3
58
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...
Charles Dickens — “A Tale of Two Cities”
59
I have been bent and broken, but — I hope — into a better shape.
Charles Dickens — “Great Expectations”
60
Trifles make the sum of life.
Charles Dickens — “David Copperfield”
61
Please, sir, I want some more.
Charles Dickens — “Oliver Twist”
62
No one is useless in this world... who lightens the burden of it for any one else.
Charles Dickens — “Our Mutual Friend”
63
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.
Charles Dickens
— “A Christmas Carol”
64
We need never be ashamed of our tears.
Charles Dickens
— “Great Expectations”
65
Family not only need to consist of merely those whom we share blood, but also for those whom we’d give blood.
Charles Dickens
— “Nicholas Nickleby”
66
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.
Charles Dickens
— “A Tale of Two Cities”
67
Fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship; and pass the rosy wine.
Charles Dickens— “The Old Curiosity Shop”
68
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.
Charles Dickens
— “David Copperfield”
69
To weep is to make less the depth of grief.
William Shakespeare
1592 Richard. Henry VI PartThree, act 2, sc.1, l.85-6.
70
Yet he hath ever but slenderly known himself,
Regan says of her father in “King Lear.”
71
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part II, Act III, Scene 1
72
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought / I summon up remembrance of things past.
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 30
73
There is no document of culture which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.
Walter Benjamin, Section 7 of "Theses on the Philosophy of History"
74
To have received the key to understanding shame does not give the power to erase it.
Annie Ernaux’s “A Girl’s Story”
75
Hell is empty and all the devils are here.
William Shakespeare, The Tempest
76
Let the flesh instruct the mind.
Anne Rice
77
When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.
Hamlet, Act IV, Scene V (Claudius)
78
Set wide the window. Let me drink the day.
Edith Wharton
79
We know what we are, but know not what we may be.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet Act IV, Scene 5 and is spoken by Ophelia.
80
The humiliated male is the Status Game's most lethal player.
Will Storr, The Status Game
81
The experience of humiliation is essentially “the annihilation of the self.
Will Storr, The Status Game
82
Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.
William Shakespeare
83
You are your best thing.
Toni Morrison, Beloved
84
Live, and be happy, and make others so.
Mary Shelley
85
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.
Mona Lazar, Medium
86
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.
Mona Lazar, Medium
87
When patriarchy makes monsters, sometimes the monsters bite back.
A.L. Kaplan
88
Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.
William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well
89
Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass
90
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.
F Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned
91
Never Let The Truth Get in the Way of a Good Story
Mark Twain
92
We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.
Leo Tolstoy
93
No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it for anyone else.
Charles Dickens, Doctor Marigola
94
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.
W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America (1935).
95
Shut the door, change the record, clean the house, shake off the dust. Stop being who you were, and change into who you are.
Paolo Coehlo
96
Rare indeed is the legal victory — in court or legislature — that is not a careful byproduct of an emerging social consensus.
Sandra Day O'Connor, The Majesty of the Law: Reflections of a Supreme Court Justice
97
There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.
Fyodor Dostoevski
98
Ozymandias
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
Here is what I would like for you to know: In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body—it is heritage.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, Letter to My Son
100
And have brought humanity to the edge of oblivion: because they think they are white.
James Baldwin
101
If you believe very strongly in something, stand up and fight for it.
Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
102
Love is space and time made perceptible to the
heart.
Marcel Proust
103
You’re seeking something, but at the same time, you are running away for all you’re worth.
Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
104
Be with someone who makes you feel intoxicated when you're sober, not someone you have to drink to forget.
J. Střelou, author
105
The pain that you feel is only temporary. The growth that you experience will last forever.
Nicole Addison, Media Dietitian, Recipe Developer & Content Creator
106
Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
107
The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.
Ernest Hemingway
108
The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.
Ernest Hemingway
109
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
Oscar Wilde
110
To go wrong in one' own way is better than to go right in someone else's.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
111
Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan
112
I desire very little, but the things I do consume me.
Beau Taplin, Desire
113
In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
George Orwell
114
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.
Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries
115
So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
Jorge Luis Borges, After a While
116
Opposition is True Friendship.
A poem by William Blake
117
I didn't fall in love, I rose in it.
Toni Morrison, Jazz
118
Light is easy to love. Show me your darkness.
R.Queen, Darkchylde
119
Money is like manure; it’s not worth a thing unless it’s spread around.
Thornton Wilder’s play, “The Matchmaker,” Brooke Astor often said used this quote.
120
If you don’t step forward, you’re always in the same place.
Nora Roberts, Tears of the Moon
121
The power of finding beauty in the humblest things makes home happy and life lovely.
Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
122
If it is true for you, it is true for someone else, and you are no longer alone.
Colon Whitehead, The Nickel Boys
123
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eve.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
124
If tribal thinking is original sin, then story is prayer.
Will Storr, The Science of Storytelling
125
The heart isn’t heart-shaped.
Julián Barnes, A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters
(reflecting on how love doesn’t guarantee happiness or anything else)
126
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
Paulo Coehlo, The Alchemist
127
If you look for perfection, you will never be satisfied.
Leo Tolstoy
128
You must not try to make love definite. It is the divine accident of life.
Sherwood Anderson
129
Words empowered by justice can never be silenced.
Isabel lbañez, Woven in Moonlight
130
One does not get better but different and older and
that is always a pleasure.
Gertrude Stein
131
Trimalchio
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
I would rather have 30 minutes of wonderful than a
lifetime of nothing special.
Robert Harling, Steel Magnolias
133
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.
Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
134
What a piece of work is a man!
Hamlet to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
135
Remembrance of Things Past
A phrase borrowed from Shakespeare’s Sonnet XXX
136
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary.
“The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe, 1845
137
What happens to a dream deferred?
“Harlem” by Langston Hughes, 1951
138
We won't have to worry about our future if you're willing to raffle off your past.
Melvyn Doughlass in "Ninotchka" 1939
139
I've signed a contract with my soul to never, ever give up.
Nyad (2023) Annette Benning's speech to her team in Cuba
140
Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.
George Orwell, 1984
141
Because you're not just self-important, you're actually important.
Oppenheimer (2023) Josh Hartnett (Ernest Lawrence) to Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer)
142
You could lift the stone without being ready for the snake that's revealed.
Oppenheimer (2023). Cillian Murphy to Kenneth Branagh.
143
You don't get to commit the sin and have us all feel sorry for you that it had consequences.
Oppenheimer (2023) Emily Blunt to Cillian Murphy after Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh's character) commits suicide.
144
These things are hard on your heart.
Oppenheimer (2023) Cillian Murphy
145
Amateurs seek the sun. Get eaten. Power stays in the shadows.
Oppenheimer (2023) Robert Downey, Jr.
146
Excuse me if I become stirred, but I am.
Oppenheimer (2023) Matthew Modine
147
Only a fool or an adolescent presumes to know someone else's relationship.
Oppenheimer (2023) Cillian Murphy about Oppenheimer's relationship to his wife, played by Emily Blunt.
148
Love loves to love love.
James Joyce, “Ulysses”
149
What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?
George Eliot, “Middlemarch”
150
Not being heard is no reason for silence.
Victor Hugo, “Les Misérables”
151
A word in earnest is as good as a speech.
Charles Dickens, “Bleak House”
152
Power wears out those who don't have it.
Godfather III
Giulio Andreotti
153
How long they choose to love you will never be your decision.
Drake, "Thank Me Now"
154
The pellet with the poison is in the vessel with the pestle. The chalice in the palace has the brew that is true.
The Court Jester
155
You can always tell the winners at the starting gate. You can tell the winners and you can tell the losers.
Robert DeNiro as Noodles in "Once Upon a Time in America"
156
The time to make up your mind about people is never.
Katharine Hepburn as Tracy Lord in "The Philadelphia Story"
157
Anticipation of death is worse than death itself.
Steven Seagal in "Hard to Kill"
158
You can't hustle a hustler.
50 Cent
159
In human relationships, kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.
Graham Greene, British writer, playwright and literary critic
160
Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
161
Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.
William Shakespeare
162
When you've got nothing, you've got nothing to lose.
Bob Dylan
163
One of the most dangerous temptations in writing (and in software and painting) is to keep something that isn’t right, just because it contains a few good bits or cost you a lot of effort.
Paul Graham, English programmer, venture capitalist, and essayist
164
If there is a secret to life, I think it might be to keep quitting things until you find something you can’t quit.
Jason McBride, Medium
165
Conscious unavailability isn’t about arrogance or indifference. It’s about reclaiming your energy, time, and peace.
Mariah, Medium
166
Pay attention to what you pay attention to.
Amy Krouse Rosenthal
167
A pastor who is a shepherd should smell like his sheep.
A Good Shepherd Will Always Smell Like Sheep.
Old saying
168
One day in retrospect the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.
Sigmund Freud
169
Only a mediocre writer is always at his best.
W. Somerset Maugham
