The Most Often Quoted ?

Wm. Shakespeare

Hey, Joe. You're probably right. I would say the King James Version of the Bible, but there may be some evidence that Shakespeare did that translation.

As for an unfamous quotable, I'll vote for everyone's grandma.

Go to any dictionary of quotations, and the 2 biggest sections are the KJ Bible and Shakespeare. Will is the most-quoted individual and the KJ Bible is the most-quoted individual literary work.

Hey, Jes. Often people get quotes from The Bible and quotes from Shakespeare confused.

Yeah like:

Let there be light
Let there be cameras
let there be action



no I made that up. I'm very silly

McTag, Silly is as silly does.... love it!

My dad as the granchildren raced through the house making great noise:
Cathy--Billy--Linda..Pshaw. by the time I think of their name they're gone.

We forgot old A. Nonymous

For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.

- Virgina Woolf

Well, of course, Sugar. Everyone knows that.

Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Graveyard" is often quoted. I , for one, love it.

Ah, Letty. I too love Gray's Elegy. "The paths of glory lead but to the grave". and "Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, and waste its sweetness on the desert air."

And we mustn't forget Omar's Rubaiyat.

Mark Twain and Winston Churchill have to be way up there.

Ah, fealola and Raggedy, Indeed, indeed. Omar, Henry, Sam, and Winnie.


Tell me not in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou are, to dust thou returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each tomorrow
Find us farther than today.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, - act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sand of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,

Learn to labor and to wait.

- By H.W.Longfellow

Two other oft-quoted authors...

Robert Frost -- "and that has made all the difference"

Henry David Thoreau -- "different drummer"

Hey, Eva. Ah, yes. Frost--".....promises to keep"

One of my favorite little known quotes of Thoreau has to do with his aunt who visited him as he was dying. She said to him, "Henry, Have you made peace with God?" To which he is reputed to have replied. "Why, Auntie. I didn't know we had quarreled."

Love it Letty.

And don't forget ole Ben Franklin.

Oh, my goodness, Raggedy. We can't forget poor Richard..

Letty, that's a good one from Thoreau. Here's my favorite...it's one of his journal entries.

"I went to the store the other day to buy a bolt for our front door, for as I told the storekeeper, the Governor was coming here. 'Aye,' said he, 'and the Legislature too.' 'Then I will take two bolts,' said I. He said that there had been a steady demand for bolts and locks of late, for our protectors were coming."

And for Benjamin Franklin...

Franklin and his friends were dining one evening when one of the guests posed the question, "What condition of man most deserves pity?" Each guest proposed an example of a pitiable condition. When Franklin's turn came, he offered: "A lonesome man on a rainy day who does not know how to read."

Good morning, all. Had to be on and off the pc. yesterday because of thunder storms.

Eva, I really got a kick out of Thoreau and the shop keeper, and Ben Franklin's observation about reading reminded me about how many young people that I taught, could not read.

Not one mention of Oscar Wilde? The man who had quotations such as...

"Self-denial is the shining sore on the leprous body of Christianity."

"A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world."

And of course, my favorite...

"America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilisation."

Hey,Gus. Oscar is one of my favorites. Wow! love the quote about dreamers; however, wouldn't want to visit your avatar in my dreams.