List of famous sayings

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A saying is a clichéd phrase or nonsensical word, often used in a metaphorical way. If you use a Famous Saying, or a Saying you are giving a piece of counsel or knowledge, or a frequently heard manifestation on the way things happen to be. Sayings don’t have to say exactly what they mean, as they are often just similar situations with different words placed within.

[edit] Incomplete List of Famous Sayings

Sympathy Quotes and Sayings by Popular Authors.

A grave is braced not just by a tombstone but by angels as well - Adabella Radici.

Strengthen me by sympathizing with my strength not my weakness - Amos Bronson Alcott.

He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than the living man - Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

The craving for sympathy is the common boundary-line between joy and sorrow - A.W. Hare and J.C. Hare.

The sympathy of sorrow is stronger than the sympathy of prosperity - Benjamin Disraeli.

Love and death are the two great hinges on which all human sympathies turn - Benjamin Robert Haydon.

For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these, “It might have been” - John Greenleaf Whittier.

And with the morn those angel faces smile, which I have loved long since and lost awhile - John Henry Newman.

The secret of language is the secret of sympathy, and its full charm is possible only to the gentle - John Ruskin.

While we are mourning the loss of our friend, others are rejoicing to meet him behind the veil - John Taylor.

A brother’s sufferings claim a brother’s pity - Joseph Addison.

Oh heart, if one should say to you that the soul perishes like the body, answer that the flower withers, but the seed remains - Kahlil Gibran.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight - Kahlil Gibran.

We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey - Kenji Miyazawa.

One of the greatest of all mental pleasures is to have our thoughts often divined: ever entered into with sympathy - Letitia Elizabeth Landon.

The world has no sympathy with any but positive griefs. It will pity you for what you lose; never for what you lack - Madame Anne Sophie Swetchine.

Our own cast-off sorrows are not sufficient to constitute sympathy for others - Madame Suzanne Curchod Necker.

The sympathy of most people consists of a mixture of good-humor, curiosity, and self-importance - Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach.

True sympathy is beyond what can be seen and touched and reasoned upon - Mrs. Campbell Praed.

It is certain my belief gains quite infinitely the very moment I can convince another mind thereof - Novalis.

He watched and wept and prayed and felt for all - Oliver Goldsmith.

He watched and wept, he prayed and felt for all - Oliver Goldsmith.

The greatest pleasures of which the human mind is susceptible are the pleasures of consciousness and sympathy - Parke Godwin.

Man is one; and he hath one great heart. It is thus we feel, with a gigantic throb athwart the sea, each other’s rights and wrongs; thus are we men - Philip James Bailey.

There are secret ties, there are sympathies, by the sweet relationship of which souls that are well matched attach themselves to each other, and are affected by I know not what, which cannot be explained - Pierre Corneille.

One man pins me to the wall, while with another I walk among the stars - Ralph Waldo Emerson.

We owe to man higher succors than food and fire. We owe to man, man - Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The secrets of life are not shown except to sympathy and likeness - Ralph Waldo Emerson.

In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing - Robert Ingersoll.

Life is eternal, and love is immortal, and death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight - Rossiter Worthington Raymond.

Sympathy is the golden key that unlocks the hearts of others - Samuel Smiles.

All powerful souls have kindred with each other - Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

All sympathy not consistent with acknowledged virtue is but disguised selfishness - Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Pity and need. Make all flesh kin. There in no caste in blood - Sir Edwin Arnold.

One common calamity makes men extremely affect each other, though they differ in every other particular - Sir Richard Steele.

It is a lively spark of nobleness to descend in most favor to one when he is lowest in affliction - Sir Philip Sidney (Sydney).

Sympathy does not think. It acts. It acts to remove. The ceaseless sufferings. Of the world - Sri Chinmoy.

Sympathy has to be the first and foremost thing in one’s life, sympathy and the feeling of oneness. There cannot be anything greater than the feeling of oneness - Sri Chinmoy.

To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die - Thomas Campbell.

Of a truth, men are mystically united: a mystic bond of brotherhood makes all men one - Thomas Carlyle.

He kept at true good humour’s mark, the social flow of pleasure’s tide: He never made a brow look dark, Nor caused a tear, but when he died - Thomas Love Peacock.

To rejoice in another’s prosperity is to give content to your lot; to mitigate another’s grief is to alleviate or dispel your own - Tryon Edwards.

Not being untutored in suffering, I learn to pity those in affliction - Vergil.

There is in souls a sympathy with sounds - William Cowper.

Nothing precludes sympathy so much as a perfect indifference to it - William Hazlitt.

We are governed by sympathy; and the extent of our sympathy is determined by that of our sensibility - William Hazlitt.

Ah! thank heaven, travelers find Samaritans as well as Levites on life’s hard way - William Makepeace Thackeray.

A marriage or a refusal or a proposal thrills through a whole household of women, and sets their hysterical sympathies at work - William Makepeace Thackeray.

For death is no more than a turning of us over from time to eternity - William Penn.

A sympathy in choice - William Shakespeare.

What my tongue dares not that my heart shall say - William Shakespeare.

Only when the sense of the pain of others begins does man begin - Yevgeny Yevtushenko.

Alcohol Quotes and Sayings by Popular Authors

Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four essential food groups: alcohol, caffeine, sugar, and fat - Alex Levine.

Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy - Benjamin Franklin.

Drunkenness is temporary suicide - Bertrand Russell.

I only take a drink on two occasions - when I’m thirsty and when I’m not - Brendan Behan.

Herb is the healing of a nation, alcohol is the destruction - Bob Marley.

If you drink, don’t drive. Don’t even putt - Dean Martin.

I drink only to make my friends seem interesting - Don Marquis.

Alcohol can ruin your life and the lives of others, so why even take one drink? - Duane Alan Hahn.

First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you - Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald.

I’d prefer to have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy - Frank Nicholson.

I feel sorry for people who don’t drink. When they wake up in the morning, that’s as good as they’re going to feel all day - Frank Sinatra.

Alcohol may be man’s worst enemy, but the bible says love your enemy - Frank Sinatra.

Wine is sunlight, held together by water - Galileo.

Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life - George Bernard Shaw.

I spent a lot of my money on booze, birds and fast cars - the rest I just squandered - George Best.

In 1969 I gave up women and alcohol and it was the worst 20 minutes of my life - George Best.

What’s drinking? A mere pause from thinking - George Gordon.

Cigarettes and coffee: an alcoholic’s best friend - Gerard Way.

Bacchus has drowned more men than Neptune - Giuseppe Garibaldi.

Water is the only drink for a wise man - Henry David Thoreau.

When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading - Henny Youngman.

My grandmother is over eighty and still doesn’t need glasses. Drinks right out of the bottle - Henny Youngman.

Stay busy, get plenty of exercise, and don’t drink too much. Then again, don’t drink too little - Herman “Jackrabbit” Smith-Johannsen.

Beer is the cause and solution to all of life’s problems - Homer Simpson.

One martini is all right. Two are too many, and three are not enough - James Thurber.

Even though a number of people have tried, no one has yet found a way to drink for a living - Jean Kerr.

When the wine goes in, strange things come out - Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller.

I prefer to think that God is not dead, just drunk - John Marcellus Huston.

Alcoholism isn’t a spectator sport. Eventually the whole family gets to play - Joyce Rebeta-Burditt.

Drink the first. Sip the second slowly. Skip the third - Knute Rockne.

The chief reason for drinking is the desire to behave in a certain way, and to be able to blame it on alcohol - Mignon McLaughlin.

I am not a heavy drinker. I can sometimes go for hours without touching a drop - Noel Coward.

The intermediate stage between socialism and capitalism is alcoholism - Norman Brenner.

Candy Is dandy, But liquor Is quicker - Ogden Nash.

I envy people who drink - at least they know what to blame everything on - Oscar Levant.

I think a man ought to get drunk at least twice a year just on principle, so he won’t let himself get snotty about it - Raymond Chandler.

Not one man in a beer commercial has a beer belly - Rita Rudner.

Why don’t you slip out of those wet clothes and into a dry Martini? - Robert Benchley.

Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors… and miss - Robert Heinlein.

Wine is bottled poetry - Robert Louis Stevenson.

Wine gives a man nothing… it only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost - Samuel Johnson.

This is one of the disadvantages of wine: it makes a man mistake words for thought - Samuel Johnson.

Of all vices, drinking is the most incompatible with greatness - Sir Walter Scott.

When the wine is in, the wit is out - Thomas Becon.

Wine hath drowned more men than the sea - Thomas Fuller.

A woman drove me to drink and I never even had the courtesy to thank her - W.C. Fields.

Teetotallers lack the sympathy and generosity of men that drink - W.H. Davies.

I have been brought up and trained to have the utmost contempt for people who get drunk - Winston Churchill.

I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me - Winston Churchill.

  • A Bird in the hand is worth two in the bush - Meaning: It’s better to have a small opportunity than to risk it for a greater one.
  • Absolute power corrupts absolutely - Meaning: Having power can destroy the very intention of its possessor.
  • All that glitters is not gold - Meaning: Just because something looks good, it doesn’t mean that it is valuable, decent or will help you in any way.
  • As busy as a bee - Meaning: - If you are ‘’’as busy as a bee”, then you are very busy.
  • At sixes and sevens - Meaning: to be disorientated, confused, or in conflict with another party or person.
  • As keen as mustard - Meaning: To be very enthusiastic about something.
  • As good as gold - Meaning: If a person or people are ‘’’as good as gold’’’ they are well behaved.
  • As fit as a fiddle - Meaning: Athletic, Olympic standard or just very well trained at a physical episode.
  • I don’t count my poison darts and trigger entombment - Meaning: I won’t take a risk or do something foolish, and endanger myself and/or those around me.
  • Give a Jackal your hand, and he’ll bite off your whole arm - Meaning: If you do something nice or risky for someone, they will most likely take advantage or want more.
  • Great minds think alike - Meaning: If two people think or say the same thing, they take a vain opportunity and use this phrase - as to say that all knowledgeable people think the same, so they must be intelligent.
  • If at first you do not succeed, try and try again - Meaning: No matter how many times you have failed something before, there is always a chance that you will pass the next time.
  • Join the Club - Meaning: If someone is in a bad situation, say this to them to indicate that you are experiencing the same troubles.
  • Too many cooks; spoil the broth - Meaning: When to many people become involved, misfortune may make presence.
  • A stitch in time saves nine - Meaning: If you stop a problem when it starts, it can save you effort, time or money for when it gets worse.
  • Prevention is cheaper than the cure - Meaning: It is easier to prevent a problem, than to cure it once it is formed.
  • You are what you eat - Meaning: If you eat healthy, you will become healthy. If you eat poorly, you mind, soul and body exterior will reflect this.
  • Don’t count your chickens, before your eggs hatch - Meaning: Don’t assume you’ve succeed, just because that’s what you’ve been told. You could lose it all, or never even have really had any of it initially.
  • Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket - Meaning: Don’t put all of your heart, soul, positions or money (ect…) into one possibility, because if you lose - is the risk really worth it?
  • Practise makes perfect - Meaning: If you aren’t good at something that you want to be good at, practise - you may improve.
  • Cleanliness is next to godliness - Meaning: The most important thing is to worship ones god, but the second most imperative thing is to remain clean.

[edit] List of Celebrities and Fictional Character’s Memorable Quoted Sayings

To see the world in a grain of sand, and Heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour.

- Written by William Blake


To those waiting with baited breath for that favourite media catchphrase; the u-turn… I have only one thing to say… u-turn if you want to. (lengthy silence) The lady’s not for turning.

- Said by Margaret Thatcher


Celebrity is death.. Celebrity.. That's the worst thing that can happen to an actor

- Said by John Cussack

[edit] See Also