The Quotations Archive currently contains 1744 quotations.

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Being on the tightrope is living; everything else is waiting.

-- Karl Wallenda

This world is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel.

-- Horace Walpole

Journalism is merely history's first draft.

-- Geoffrey C. Ward

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains.The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.

-- William Arthur Ward

The most exciting attractions are between two opposites that never meet.

-- Andy Warhol

If your professor wrote it, it's as near to the truth as you ever need to get.

-- John Watson, University of Canterbury

The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us.

-- Bill Watterson, in his comic strip Calvin and Hobbes

If a man is talking in the forest, and there is no woman there to hear him, is he still wrong?

-- Jenny Weber

I still live.

-- Daniel Webster, dying words

We think caged birds sing, when indeed they cry.

-- John Webster

Even overweight cats instinctively know the cardinal rule: when fat, arrange yourself in slim poses.

-- John Weitz, American Designer

Change before you have to.

-- Jack Welch

Go away...I'm alright.

-- H. G. Wells, dying words

Beware you be not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.

-- John Wesley

A man in the house is worth two in the street.

-- Mae West

A woman has got to love a bad man once or twice in her life to be thankful for a good one.

-- Mae West

I like two kinds of men: domestic and foreign.

-- Mae West

I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.

-- Mae West

It is better to be looked over than overlooked.

-- Mae West

It's not the men in my life that count, it's the life in my men.

-- Mae West

Marriage is a great institution, but I'm not ready for an institution.

-- Mae West

When women go wrong, men go right after them.

-- Mae West

Whenever I'm caught between two evils, I take the one I've never tried.

-- Mae West

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.

-- Rebecca West, 1913

Lose an hour in the morning, and you will spend all day looking for it.

-- Richard Whately

If other people are going to talk, conversation becomes impossible.

-- James McNeill Whistler

I don't know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.

-- E. B. White

Whatever women do they must do it twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily this is not difficult.

-- Charlotte Whitton

A true gentleman is one who is never unintentionally rude.

-- Oscar Wilde

Ah, well, then I suppose I shall have to die beyond my means.

-- Oscar Wilde, dying words

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That is his.

-- Oscar Wilde

As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them.

-- Oscar Wilde

Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.

-- Oscar Wilde

Biography lends to death a new terror.

-- Oscar Wilde

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

-- Oscar Wilde

Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.

-- Oscar Wilde

Experience is the name that everyone gives to their mistakes.

-- Oscar Wilde

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

-- Oscar Wilde

For those who like that sort of thing, it's the sort of thing that they like.

-- Oscar Wilde

I am not young enough to know everything.

-- Oscar Wilde

I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.

-- Oscar Wilde

I sometimes think that God, in creating man, overestimated His ability.

-- Oscar Wilde

It is absurd to divide people into good or bad. People are either charming or tedious.

-- Oscar Wilde

It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.

-- Oscar Wilde

Its failings notwithstanding, there is much to be said in favor of journalism in that by giving us the opinion of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.

-- Oscar Wilde

Long engagements give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which is never advisable.

-- Oscar Wilde

Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

-- Oscar Wilde

Marriage is the one subject on which all women agree and all men disagree.

-- Oscar Wilde

Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.

-- Oscar Wilde

Men marry because they are tired, women because they are curious; both are disappointed.

-- Oscar Wilde

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.

-- Oscar Wilde

Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays.

-- Oscar Wilde

Musical people always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be perfectly deaf.

-- Oscar Wilde

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

-- Oscar Wilde

Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.

-- Oscar Wilde

Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.

-- Oscar Wilde

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.

-- Oscar Wilde

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.

-- Oscar Wilde

The English country gentleman galloping after a fox--the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.

-- Oscar Wilde

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

-- Oscar Wilde

The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.

-- Oscar Wilde

The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

-- Oscar Wilde

The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands.

-- Oscar Wilde

There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

-- Oscar Wilde

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.

-- Oscar Wilde

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.

-- Oscar Wilde

Who, being loved, is poor?

-- Oscar Wilde

Work is the curse of the drinking class.

-- Oscar Wilde

Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do.

-- Oscar Wilde

Hope, like faith, is nothing if it is not courageous; it is nothing if it is not ridiculous.

-- Thornton Wilder

Football incorporates the two worst elements of American society: violence punctuated by committee meetings.

-- George F. Will, journalist, political commentator, 1994

Books had instant replay long before televised sports.

-- Bern Williams

You have a cough? Go home tonight, eat a whole box of Ex-Lax--tomorrow you'll be afraid to cough.

-- Pearl Williams

Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. The real miracle is the love that inspires them. In this sense everything that comes from love is a miracle.

-- Marianne Williamson

Love is what we are born with. Fear is what we learn. The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and prejudices and the acceptance of love back in our hearts. Love is the essential reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life. Meaning does not lie in things. Meaning lies in us.

-- Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love

The mind has exactly the same power as the hands: not merely to grasp the world, but to change it.

-- Colin Wilson

A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.

-- Walter Winchell

We had a lot in common. I loved him and he loved him.

-- Shelley Winters

Guys are lucky because they get to grow mustaches. I wish I could. It's like having a little pet for your face.

-- Anita Wise

The limits of my language means the limits of my world.

-- Ludwig Wittgenstein

Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure.

-- George E. Woodberry

Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.

-- John R. Wooden, Practical Modern Basketball

Good judgement comes from experience, and experience--well, that comes from poor judgement.

-- Cousin Woodman

The Church is an organism that grows best in an alien society.

-- C. Stacey Woods

Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title.

-- Virginia Woolf

For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.

-- Virginia Woolf

Humor is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue.

-- Virginia Woolf

I have lost friends, some by death, others through sheer inability to cross the street.

-- Virginia Woolf

I read the book of Job last night - I don't think God comes out well in it.

-- Virginia Woolf

I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

-- Virginia Woolf

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

-- Virginia Woolf

Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others.

-- Virginia Woolf

Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded.

-- Virginia Woolf

On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points.

-- Virginia Woolf

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

-- Virginia Woolf

The first duty of a lecturer: to hand you after an hour's discourse a nugget of pure truth to wrap up between the pages of your notebooks, and keep on the mantlepiece forever.

-- Virginia Woolf

The older one grows, the more one likes indecency.

-- Virginia Woolf

Why are women so much more interesting to men than men are to women?

-- Virginia Woolf

Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends.

-- Virginia Woolf, Bernard, in The Waves, 1931; repr. 1943, p. 189

Conversation, fastidious Goddess, loves blood better than brick, and feasts most subtly on the human will.

-- Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

The child is the father of the man.

-- William Wordsworth

A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.

-- Frank Lloyd Wright

The truth is more important than the facts.

-- Frank Lloyd Wright

Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect.

-- Steven Wright

I have a large seashell collection, which I keep scattered on beaches around the world. Maybe you've seen it.

-- Steven Wright

I have an existential map; it has 'you are here' written all over it.

-- Steven Wright

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

-- Steven Wright

Imagine if birds were tickled by feathers. You'd see a flock of birds come by, laughing hysterically!

-- Steven Wright

On the other hand, you have different fingers.

-- Steven Wright

There's a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore like an idiot.

-- Steven Wright

What's another word for "Thesaurus?"

-- Steven Wright

When I have a kid, I wanna put him in one of those strollers for twins, then run around the mall looking frantic.

-- Steven Wright

We have children because we want immortality and this is the most reliable way of getting it.

-- Woodrow Wyatt