Quotes for an essay opener

Tennyson, grieving the sudden death of his closest friend, decides that the pain of losing someone is better than never having loved them. It was written about friendship and death, not a breakup.

Lincoln's warning that the United States could not stay half slave and half free forever. He borrowed the image from the Gospels, where Jesus uses it to answer critics.

Great things grow from small beginnings, so start with what is right in front of you. The original says the journey begins “beneath one's feet.”

Shallow knowledge makes people overconfident; only deep study makes them humble and wise. Pope's advice is to learn deeply or not at all.

The first line of Keats's long poem Endymion: beautiful things never lose their power to delight us, and their loveliness grows over time instead of fading.

Truth did give a famous speech for women's rights in 1851, but the refrain “Ain't I a woman?” appears only in a version published twelve years later by another activist.

Latin for “the die has been cast.” Once dice are thrown you cannot take them back, so the phrase marks a decision that commits you to whatever happens next.

Art is not meant to teach, preach or serve a practical purpose. Its value is that it is beautiful and gives pleasure, the way a flower does.

The melancholy Jaques compares life to a play in seven acts, from baby to old age. It is a witty, gloomy view of life that the play quietly answers.

Latin for “love of fate.” Nietzsche used it for the attitude of wanting your life exactly as it is, hard parts included, instead of merely putting up with it.

Franklin's advice to Philadelphians on preventing house fires. It is now used about health, but it began as fire safety and led to the city's first volunteer fire company.

If you spend even a little less than you earn, you are fine. If you spend even a little more, you are in trouble. The size of the gap matters less than which side of the line you are on.

Howe called on mothers everywhere to unite and refuse to let their sons be sent to kill other mothers' sons. Her Mother's Day was a day of protest for peace.

A skill takes so long to master that one lifetime is barely enough. It is a call to start now and to respect how much there is to learn.

A call to public service at the height of the Cold War. The very next sentence widens the same challenge to the whole world, which is the half most people never quote.

Gandhi did write that changing ourselves changes how the world treats us. The neat one-line slogan is a modern paraphrase that does not appear anywhere in his writings.

Whether something is beautiful depends on the person looking at it. There is no single standard everyone shares.

Beautiful things do not need a purpose to justify them. A flower blooming where no one sees it is reason enough in itself.

The urn tells us that beauty and truth are the same thing, and that this is the only wisdom people need. Whether Keats himself believed it, or is letting the urn speak for itself, is still debated.

Small, regular spending adds up. A habit that seems too minor to matter can drain your money as surely as a big mistake.

Family ties are stronger than any other bond, so relatives should stand by each other first.

Polonius declares that being brief is the essence of intelligence, in the middle of one of the longest-winded speeches in the play. “Wit” meant good sense, not just humor.

Latin for “seize the day,” or more literally “pluck the day” like ripe fruit. Horace tells a friend to enjoy today instead of worrying about a future no one can know.

Jo March grumbles that Christmas is ruined because the family is too poor for gifts. The rest of the chapter shows the sisters discovering that giving to others makes the day.

Caesar tells his wife that cowards suffer death over and over in their fears, while the brave face it only once. He says it on the morning he is murdered.

Being too nosy can get you into trouble. It is usually said as a light warning to someone asking too many questions.

Churchill did say this in Parliament in 1947, but in longer words and with a twist most people miss. He introduced it as something “that has been said,” not as his own invention.

When you get rid of what is bad, be careful not to lose what is good along with it.

Said by Mandela at the launch of an educational broadcasting project. For a man whose people had been denied decent schooling under apartheid, education was a form of liberation.

The catchphrase of Sherlock Holmes, which he never says in the original stories. Holmes does say “Elementary” and “my dear Watson,” but never together.

Even while being executed, Jesus asks God to forgive the people responsible, because they do not understand what they are doing.

Henry's call for Virginia to arm itself against Britain, weeks before the fighting began at Lexington and Concord. The famous words were written down only 42 years later, from listeners' memories.

The song of the angels to the shepherds on the night Jesus was born. It praises God and announces peace and goodwill to people on earth.

Tiny Tim, a sick little boy from a poor family, asks God's blessing on everyone at the Christmas table. Dickens ends the whole book with it, turning a child's grace into a blessing on the reader.

Einstein rejected the idea that quantum mechanics is fundamentally random. “God” was his way of talking about the laws of nature, not a personal God.

In Frost's poem, a farmer's neighbor repeats an old saying while they rebuild the stone wall between them. The speaker doubts it. The poem asks the question instead of answering it.

The last words of the Gettysburg Address, spoken at a cemetery for Union soldiers. Lincoln turned a funeral into a promise that the war was being fought to keep democracy itself alive.

Cicero says that being grateful is the most important virtue and the source of the others, because people who remember what they owe are loyal, dutiful and kind.

Said, usually as a joke, when two people have the same idea at the same time. It flatters both of them.

Emerson means we become strong by harnessing forces greater than ourselves, like wind, water and great ideas, and letting them carry our work. Aim your effort in the direction those higher powers already move.

Dickinson pictures hope as a small bird that lives in the soul, sings without stopping through every storm, and never asks for anything in return.

The calm radio call from Apollo 13 after an oxygen tank exploded. The real words were “we've had a problem,” said first by Jack Swigert and repeated by Jim Lovell.

Churchill's first promise as Prime Minister was not victory but hardship. He told Parliament the truth about the war ahead and asked for its support anyway.

The popular summary of Socrates' wisdom: he was wiser than others only because he knew the limits of his knowledge. The exact phrase is a later compression of what Plato wrote.

The last words reported of a 21-year-old American spy hanged by the British. They were written down years later, and they echo a line from a popular play of the time.

Descartes doubted everything he could, and found one thing he could not doubt: that he was doubting, and therefore thinking, and therefore existed.

Thoreau explains why he moved to Walden Pond: to strip life down to its essentials and find out what it really has to teach, so that he would not reach death and discover he had not lived.

Scrooge, shown his own lonely grave, promises to live by the spirit of Christmas, meaning generosity and kindness, every day of the year, not just on December 25.

Jordan lists his missed shots and lost games and says those failures are the reason for his success. The words were spoken by Jordan in a Nike ad written by its agency.

Newton credits earlier scientists for making his discoveries possible. He borrowed the image of dwarfs on giants' shoulders from medieval scholars.

Douglass's argument that freedom is never handed over by those in power. It has to be demanded, and the demand will be uncomfortable.

Einstein says knowledge is limited to what we already understand, while imagination reaches beyond it. He was describing how he made discoveries.

A wry aside in a letter about the new U.S. Constitution. Franklin made it famous, but the joke was already in print more than seventy years earlier.

King's answer to clergymen who called him an outside agitator. Because all communities are tied together, he argued, he had every right to be in Birmingham.

Austen's narrator states a “universal truth” that is really a joke: it is the families of single women who want a rich bachelor, not the bachelor who wants a wife.

Telemachus, whose father Odysseus left for war when he was a baby, says he has only his mother's word for who his father is. No child can be completely sure.

Roosevelt's defense of people who try and fail over critics who never try. It was part of a long speech in Paris about the duties of citizens in a democracy.

Washington, at the request of Congress, set aside a day for Americans to thank God for the country's blessings, above all the chance to set up a new government peacefully.

Dickens describes the years before the French Revolution as a time of extremes, then adds the sting: it was much like his own day, when people also insisted everything was either the best or the worst.

Someone who can do many things but none of them really well. Today it is often turned around to praise people with broad skills.

Shakespeare defines true love as constant: it does not change when circumstances change, and it does not fade with time or age.

Paul describes the kind of love that should hold a community together: patient, kind, humble and enduring. It was written to a quarreling church, not a couple.

Treat even people who hate you with goodwill, wish them well and pray for them, just as God sends sunshine and rain on good and bad people alike.

Latin for “remember that you must die.” It is a reminder that life is short, meant to make you humble and to push you to spend your days on what matters.

Latin for “a healthy mind in a healthy body.” Juvenal says that if you must pray for something, pray for these, not for wealth, power or a long life.

A shortened form of 1 Timothy 6:10, which warns against the love of money, not money itself. Dropping “the love of” changes the meaning.

A direct challenge to the Soviet leader to prove his reforms were real by opening the Berlin Wall. Many of Reagan's own advisers wanted the line removed.

Don't borrow money and don't lend it, because a loan can cost you both the money and the friend, and borrowing makes you careless with what you have.

Churchill's tribute to the fighter pilots of the Royal Air Force during the Battle of Britain, a few thousand airmen defending a nation of millions.

Everything flows and changes, so the river is never the same twice, and neither are you. The popular wording is a later paraphrase of Heraclitus's surviving fragments.

Donne, seriously ill and hearing a funeral bell, reflects that every person is part of humanity, so every death diminishes us all. The same passage ends with “for whom the bell tolls.”

Everyone, king or cobbler, feels something on New Year's Day, because it is the day from which we all count our time and reckon how much is left.

Richard says the winter of the family's unhappiness has been turned into glorious summer by his brother, King Edward IV. The famous half-line is usually quoted as if it meant the opposite.

Juliet asks why Romeo has to be a Montague, the son of her family's enemy. “Wherefore” means “why,” not “where.”

People who once ran their own government now only want two things, free food and entertainment. Rulers who supply both can keep power without being questioned.

Acton's argument that historians should not excuse popes and kings because of their office. He wrote “tends to” corrupt, a qualification usually dropped.

Arrogance leads to ruin. The popular saying shortens a two-part verse from the Book of Proverbs, which pairs pride with destruction and a haughty spirit with a fall.

Latin for “Who will guard the guards themselves?” Today it asks who keeps the powerful honest when they are the ones meant to keep everyone else in line.

An hour spent idle is not free. If you could have been earning during that time, the wages you gave up are a real cost, on top of whatever you spent.

Twain's joke when a newspaper wrongly reported he was dying. His real words were drier: “The report of my death was an exaggeration.”

The poet asks the New Year's bells to ring away the old year's grief, quarrels and injustice and to ring in kindness, truth and peace.

A rough, practical guide based on experience rather than exact measurement or theory.

The poet decides the beloved is better than a summer's day, which is too short and changeable, and promises that the poem itself will keep their beauty alive forever.

Roosevelt's rule for power: stay calm and polite, but have real strength ready. He called it a West African proverb, though no such proverb has been found.

Keep wanting more and keep being willing to look foolish by trying new things. Jobs borrowed the words from the farewell issue of the Whole Earth Catalog.

Spencer's phrase for natural selection: organisms best suited to their environment survive and reproduce. “Fittest” means best adapted, not strongest.

Latin for “time flees,” the source of the English saying “time flies.” Virgil's fuller line adds that the time lost can never be recovered.

Armstrong's first words as he stepped onto the Moon. He said he meant “one small step for a man,” and the missing word has been debated ever since.

A promise that justice wins in the long run, even when progress is slow. King's compact wording condenses a longer image from an abolitionist sermon of 1853.

Burns, having wrecked a mouse's nest with his plough, tells her that the best plans of mice and men often go wrong, and that he is worse off than her because he worries about the past and the future.

The person we are as children shapes the adult we become. Wordsworth hopes his grown-up self will keep the wonder he felt as a child seeing a rainbow.

Lysander comforts Hermia, whose father forbids their marriage, by saying true love has always faced obstacles. It is a promise that trouble does not mean love is false.

Mothers shape the next generation, so their influence on the world is greater than any king's or general's. The poem praises motherhood as the strongest force for good.

Watching a play, Queen Gertrude says the actress playing a queen promises too much love and loyalty to be believed. “Protest” meant “vow,” not “object.”

Thoreau argues that most people work themselves to exhaustion for things they don't need, and hide their despair behind ordinary routines. Walden is his experiment in living otherwise.

Education should not just pour facts into students but light their own desire to think and to find the truth.

Said to a country in the depths of the Great Depression, days before he closed the banks. It was a plea to stop a panic that was making the crisis worse, not a general saying about bravery.

The fastest runner doesn't always win and the strongest army doesn't always conquer. Luck and timing affect everyone, so talent alone is no guarantee.

At his trial, Socrates refuses to stop questioning people about how to live, saying a life without such questioning is not worth living for a human being. He chose death over silence.

In the middle of the Civil War, Lincoln asked Americans to give thanks for good harvests and for the country's blessings, and to pray for widows, orphans and the healing of the nation.

Polonius's parting advice to his son Laertes: be honest with yourself, and you will be honest with others. It is good advice from a character who rarely follows it.

Part of Santayana's argument that progress depends on memory. He was writing about how individuals and societies learn, not giving a warning specifically about politics or war.

Written by Franklin for the Pennsylvania Assembly in a tax dispute with the colony's proprietors. It was a defense of the elected assembly's power to tax, not an argument against security measures.

Hamlet asks whether it is better to live and endure life's suffering or to die and end it, and concludes that fear of what comes after death keeps people going.

Everyone makes mistakes; forgiving them is what lifts us toward the divine. Pope wrote it to urge critics to be generous to struggling writers.

A traveler picks one of two paths that were “really about the same,” then imagines telling the story years later as if the choice made all the difference. It is a poem about how we tell stories about our choices.

Latin for “I came, I saw, I conquered.” Caesar used it to report a victory so fast and complete that three words were enough to tell the whole story.

Lord Darlington, a society man in love, says that everyone is flawed, but some people still look up toward something higher. His friends tease him for being romantic.

The founding claim of the United States, drafted by Thomas Jefferson. Its authors applied it narrowly, but later generations used its own words to demand freedom and equal rights.

Churchill's promise, right after the Dunkirk evacuation, that Britain would never surrender even if invaded. He paired it with a blunt warning that Dunkirk was a defeat, not a victory.

Whatever work is in front of you, give it everything you have, because life is short and there will be no chance to do it later.

Spoken weeks before the Civil War ended and six weeks before Lincoln was killed. He asked the winning side to heal the nation without revenge.

Steady, useful work protects us from three things that ruin lives: having nothing to do, falling into bad habits, and being poor.

Replying to an eight-year-old who asked if Santa was real, Church argued that love, generosity and wonder are real even though no one can see them, and that Santa Claus is real in the same way.

If you never try, you are guaranteed to fail, so take your chances. Gretzky said it to a hockey journalist in 1983, and the wording has shifted slightly since.

Jobs urges graduates to follow their own judgment rather than other people's expectations, because life is short. He spoke from the experience of a recent cancer diagnosis.