Famous Speaking Quotes & Sayings

I'm certainly lucky to have got famous through something that was so well liked, generally speaking. — Daniel Radcliffe

The famous courtesan Clarimonde died recently, as the result of an orgy which lasted eight days and eight nights. It was something infernally
magnificent. They revived the abominations of the feasts of Belshazzar and Cleopatra. Great God!
what an age this is in which we live! The guests were served by swarthy slaves speaking an unknown tongue, who to my mind had every appearance of veritable demons; the livery of the meanest among them might have served as a gala-costume for an emperor. There have always been current some very
strange stories concerning this Clarimonde, and all her lovers have come to a miserable or a violent end. It has been said that she was a ghoul, a female vampire; but I believe that she was Beelzebub in person. — Theophile Gautier

One of the towering figures of the age of Enlightenment was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, known to this day in German-speaking lands as the poet of princes and prince of poets. Unlike Voltaire, he openly practiced esoteric disciplines, particularly alchemy. He wrote a famous verse about the Cathars, which translated says: "There were those who knew the Father. What became of them? Oh, they took them and burned them!" Goethe's chief work, of course, is his Faust. As noted in chapter 8, the figure of Faust was inspired by the image of the early Gnostic teacher Simon Magus, one of whose honorific names was Faustus. While in Christopher Marlowe's sixteenth-century play, — Stephan A. Hoeller

Having a Nobel Prize or being a famous scientist will get you a week to a week and a half, metaphorically speaking, of a hearing for your new idea, but after that, it's going to tank if you don't have the evidence and support for it. — Michael Shermer

Among the Diaries beginning with the second quarter of our century, there is frequent mention of a lady then becoming famous for her beauty and her wit: "an unusual combination," in the deliberate syllables of one of the writers, who is, however, not disposed to personal irony when speaking of her. — George Meredith

But the most sumptuous thing in the room at that moment was naturally the sumptuously laid table, though, of course, even that was comparatively speaking: the table-cloth was clean, the silver was brightly polished; three kinds of wonderfully baked bread, two bottles of wine, two bottles of excellent monastery mead, and a large glass jug of monastery kvas, famous throughout the neighbourhood. There was no vodka at all. Rakitin related afterwards that this time it was a five-course dinner: fish soup of sterlets served with fish patties; then boiled fish excellently prepared in a special way; then salmon cutlets, ice cream and stewed fruits and, finally, a fruit jelly. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

So you want to be famous? You want to inspire large groups of people? You want to be recognized and appreciated by thousands or even millions? Stop trying to do it by speaking to the masses. Do it by speaking to individuals. If what you have is truly amazing and unique and worth sharing, individuals will share it. It is always about the individual, no matter how big you get. Remember that. — Dan Pearce

It would appear to a quoting dilettante - i.e., one of those writers and scholars who fill up their texts with phrases from some dead authority - that, as phrased by Hobbes, "from like antecedents flow like consequents." Those who believe in the unconditional benefits of past experience should consider this pearl of wisdom allegedly voiced by a famous ship's captain:
"But in all my experience, I have never been in any accident ... of any sort worth speaking about. I have seen but one vessel in distress in all my years at sea. I never saw a wreck and never have been wrecked nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort." E. J. Smith, 1907, Captain, RMS
Titanic Captain Smith's ship sank in 1912 in what became the most talked-about shipwreck in history. — Nicholas Nassim Taleb

We call it Albion. It is the English-speaking world. The one where they kill babies in the womb, right? And here I was hoping we'd be famous for the Moonshot, or democracy, or the Beatles, or something. — John C. Wright

It's just that the characters are speaking their mind. As opposed to it just being an expression, they're actually saying what's on their mind, and that's something that Tennessee Williams is really famous for. Shakespeare does that and Tennessee Williams does that. You crave that, when you're an actor, for sure. — Bryce Dallas Howard

The trapper nodded and returned his pistol to its holster. 'He can count to one hundred if it suits you,' he said, opening and closing his hand to stretch it.

Charlie made a sour face. 'What a stupid thing to say. Think of something else besides that. A man wants his last words to be respectable.'

'I will be speaking all though this day and into the night. I will tell my grandchildren of the time I killed the famous Sisters brothers.'

'That at least makes some sense. Also it will serve as a humorous footnote. — Patrick DeWitt

English people are famous for never speaking out but only saying what they really feel about you behind your back. Americans believe the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. I like exploring those, er, differences in national snippiness. — Rachel Johnson

To speak today of a famous novelist is like speaking of a famous cabinetmaker or speedboat designer. Adjective is inappropriate to noun. — Gore Vidal

Speaking of wine, beer never caught on with the ancient Greeks and Romans the way it did in Mesopotamia and Western Europe - at least among the privileged classes, who showed a strong preference for fermented grape juice.[11] Beer was seen as a drink of peasants and savages, earning the contempt of public intellectuals like Pliny the Elder, who, in reference to the people of Spain and Gaul (now France) fumed that, "The perverted ingenuity of man has given even to water the power of intoxicating where wine is not procurable. Western nations intoxicate themselves by means of moistened grain."[12] One wonders what Pliny would say today if you were to hand him a glass of the famous beer that now bears his name - Pliny the Elder IPA, brewed by California's Russian River Brewing Co. and renowned as one of the world's finest beers. — James Houston