Top 88 Aught Quotes
#1. The Nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#2. Those who are ignorant of Geology, find no difficulty in believing that the world was made as it is; and the shepherd, untutored in history, sees no reason to regard the green mounds which indicate the site of a Roman camp, as aught but part and parcel of the primeval hill-side.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#3. I doubt I'm any wiser than I was five hundred years back. I'm older. I've been up, and been down, and been up again. Have I learned aught? I've learned from my mistakes, but I've had more time to commit more mistakes.
Neil Gaiman
#4. You ask my love completest,
As strong next year as now,
The devil take you, sweetest,
Ere I make aught such vow.
Life is a masque that changes,
A fig for constancy!
No love at all were better,
Than love which is not free.
Ernest Dowson
#5. I have heard a good many pretend that they are going to die; or that they have died, for aught that I know. Nonsense! I'll defy them to do it. They have n't got life enough in them ... Only half a dozen or so have died since the world began.
Henry David Thoreau
#6. I do not pretend to aught worth knowing, I do not pretend I could be a teacher To help or convert a fellow-creature. Then, too, I've neither lands nor gold, Nor the world's least pomp or honor hold - No dog would endure such a curst existence!
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#7. The fact is, that life is too short to be occupied by aught but the present - hope and remembrance are equally a waste of time.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
#8. The moral I draw is that the writer should seek his reward in the pleasure of his work and in release from the burden of thought; and, indifferent to aught else, care nothing for praise or censure, failure or success.
W. Somerset Maugham
#9. O my Lord Jesus, answer no desire of mine if it be not according to thy judgment; and if in aught that I have asked I have failed to seek for what I want, amend my pleading, for thou art infinitely wiser than I.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
#10. Ay me! for aught that I could ever read, Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth. But, either it was different in blood,- Or else it stood upon the choice of friends,- Or, if there were a sympathy in choice, War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it.
William Shakespeare
#11. The trouble with Hooker is that he's got his headquarters where his hindquarters aught to be.
Abraham Lincoln
#12. To lovers, I devise their imaginary world, with whatever they may need, as the stars of the sky, the red, red roses by the wall, the snow of the hawthorn, the sweet strains of music, and aught else they may desire to figure to each other the lastingness and beauty of their love.
Williston Fish
#13. If any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.
John Stuart Mill
#14. God Most High has said, "Is the reward of virtue aught save virtue?" ... Know, O man, that the covenant of servanthood is incumbent upon you, and that the covenant of Lordship is incumbent upon His magnanimity, as He Most High has said, " ... and fulfill your covenant, I shall fulfill My covenant."
Ibn Ata Allah
#15. Much like a subtle spider which doth sit
In middle of her web, which spreadeth wide;
If aught do touch the utmost thread of it,
She feels it instantly on every side.
Sir John Davies
#16. 'T is sweeter for thee despairing Than aught in the world beside,-Jessy!
Robert Burns
#17. I swear to thee, friend, and may God Almighty bear me witness. For the sake of your love to me, never shall those that are yours go wanting, while I have aught to give.
Diana Gabaldon
#18. Whither thou goest, I will go;
Where thou diest, will I die
And there will I be buried:
The Angel do so to me, and more also,
If aught but death part thee and me.
Cassandra Clare
#19. It never was our guise to slight the poor, or aught humane despise.
Homer
#20. Burn to be great, Pay not thy praise to lofty things alone. The plains are everlasting as the hills, The bard cannot have two pursuits; aught else Comes on the mind with the like shock as though Two worlds had gone to war, and met in air.
Philip James Bailey
#21. Extol not riches, then, the toil of fools,
The wise man's cumbrance, if not snare; more apt
To slacken virtue and abate her edge
Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise.
John Milton
#22. The one infinite is perfect , in simplicity , of itself, absolutely, nor can aught be greater or better, This is the one Whole, God , universal Nature , occupying all space, of whom naught but infinity can give the perfect image or semblance.
Giordano Bruno
#24. The turn of a sentence has decided the fate of many a friendship, and, for aught that we know, the fate of many a kingdom.
Jeremy Bentham
#25. The ancients sought their gods in temples, in worldly goods, in the technology they created, and lastly in the stars. They found neither gods nor enlightenment in the materials of the universe, nor will any wise soul find aught in such but the reflection of sorrow.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#26. For common instinct of our race declares
That body of itself exists: unless
This primal faith, deep-founded, fail us not,
Naught will there be whereunto to appeal
On things occult when seeking aught to prove
By reasonings of mind.
Lucretius
#28. I had requested all who might find aught meriting censure in my writings, to do me the favor of pointing it out to me, I may state that no objections worthy of remark have been alleged against what I then said on these questions except two, to which I will here briefly reply.
Thomas Hobbes
#29. Yes, September, We have all of us got it jumbled up. You never feel so grown up as when you are eleven, and never so young and unsure as when you are forty. That is why time is a rotten jokester and no one aught to let him in to dinner.
Catherynne M Valente
#30. Not Chaos, not the darkest pit of lowest Erebus, nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out by help of dreams - can breed such fear and awe as fall upon us often when we look into our Minds, into the Mind of Man.
William Wordsworth
#31. Nothing is true but Love, nor aught of worth; Love is the incense which doth sweeten earth.
Richard Chenevix Trench
#32. If a man's at odds to know his own mind it's because he hasn't got aught but his mind to know it with.
Cormac McCarthy
#33. Take my hand, my love. On sinews of air we tread Aught but distance our guide With no tempo to our gait No endpoint drawn Neither plot nor plan
C.D. Reiss
#34. How terribly hard and almost impossible it is to tell the truth. More than anything else, the artist in us prevents us from telling aught as it really happened. We deal with the truth as the cook deals with meat and vegetables.
Eric Hoffer
#35. Though Diogenes lived in a tub, there might be, for aught I know, as much pride under his rags, as in the fine-spun garments of the divine Plato.
Jonathan Swift
#36. Verily, men do foolish things thoughtlessly, knowing not why; but no woman doeth aught without a reason.
Gelett Burgess
#37. Have I done aught of value to my fellow-men? Then have I done much for myself.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#38. How free from all vanity he carried himself in matter of honour and dignity, (as they are esteemed his laboriousness and assiduity, his readiness to hear any man, that had aught to say tending to any common good: how generally and impartially he would give every man his due; his skill and knowledge,
Marcus Aurelius
#40. There 's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 't is not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all. Since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is 't to leave betimes? Hamlet. V.2
William Shakespeare
#41. I pray you, in your letters,
When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,
Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice. Then must you speak
Of one that loved not wisely but too well;
Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought,
Perplexed in the extreme ...
William Shakespeare
#42. The coward wretch whose hand and heart Can bear to torture aught below, Is ever first to quail and start From the slightest pain or equal foe.
Bertrand Russell
#44. The definition of a page-turner really aught to be that this page is so good, you can't bear to leave it behind, but then the next page is there and it might be just as amazing as this one.
John Burnside
#45. Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death. (moby dick chap 29 p123)
Herman Melville
#46. If aught I have said is truth, that truth shall reveal itself in a clearer voice, and in words more kin to your thoughts.
Khalil Gibran
#47. Nor aught so good but strained from that fair use,
Revolts from true birth stumbling on abuse.
William Shakespeare
#48. Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves, Over the unreturning brave.
Lord Byron
#49. Such events cannot be ignored, but there is a considerate way of historically treating them. If a well-constituted individual refrains from blazoning aught amiss or calamitous in his family, a nation in the like circumstance may without reproach be equally discreet. Though
Herman Melville
#50. Neither my place, nor aught I heard of business,
Hath raised me from my bed; nor doth the general care
Take hold on me; for my particular grief
Is of so floodgate and o'erbearing nature
That it engluts and swallows other sorrows,
And it is still itself.
William Shakespeare
#51. Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice: then must you speak
Of one that loved not wisely but too well;
Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought
William Shakespeare
#52. Well, that's the tackiest color I've ever seen, and we'll have half the town talking about us, but if it can lift May's heart like that, I guess she aught to live inside it.
Sue Monk Kidd
#53. Nature allows
Destruction nor collapse of aught, until
Some outward force may shatter by a blow,
Or inward craft, entering its hollow cells,
Dissolve it down.
Lucretius
#54. We cannot ask thee for aught, for thou knowest our needs before they are born in us:
Kahlil Gibran
#55. But that from us aught should ascend to Heav'n So prevalent as to concern the mind Of God, high-bless'd, or to incline His will, Hard to belief may seem; yet this will prayer.
John Milton
#56. Faith and unfaith can ne'er be equal powers;
Unfaith is aught is want of faith in all.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
#57. If I am using a sable, it may start off as an eight or seven, but it's a double aught by the time I'm done. I hate brights ... they have no use. You might as well buy a filbert and take the scissors and cut off half of what you paid for.
Nelson Shanks
#58. Who, under pressing temptations to lie, adheres to truth, nor to the profane betrays aught of a sacred trust, is near the summit of wisdom and virtue.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#59. If thy meditation tends to fill thy note-book with notions, and good sayings, concerning God, and not thy heart with longing after him, and delight in him, for aught I know thy book is as much a Christian as thou (553).
Richard Baxter
#60. Not by constraint or severity shall you have access to true wisdom, but by abandonment, and childlike mirth-fulness. If you would know aught, be gay before it.
Henry David Thoreau
#61. Wrongly do the Greeks suppose that aught begins or ceases to be; for nothing comes into being or is destroyed; but all is an aggregation or secretion of preexisting things; so that all becoming might more correctly be called becoming mixed, and all corruption, becoming separate.
Anaxagoras
#62. If it come to prohibiting, there is aught more likely to be prohibited than truth itself.
John Milton
#63. O Ceremony, show me but thy worth? What is thy soul of adoration? Art thou aught else but place, degree, and form, Creating awe and fear in other men?
William Shakespeare
#64. By mere burial man arrives not at bliss; and in the future life, throughout its whole infinite range, they will seek for happiness as vainly as they sought it here, who seek it in aught else than that which so closely surrounds them here - the Infinite.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
#65. Nor aught availed him now to have built in heaven high towers; nor did he scrape by all his engines, but was headlong sent with his industrious crew to build in hell.
John Milton
#66. If aught can teach us aught, Affliction's looks,
Making us pry into ourselves so, near,
Teach us to know ourselves, beyond all books,
Or all the learned schools that ever were.
Sir John Davies
#67. Ay me! For aught that I could every read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smooth,
But either it was different in blood-
William Shakespeare
#68. Hail universal Lord, be bounteous still To give us only good; and if the night Have gathered aught of evil or concealed, Disperse it, as now light dispels the dark.
John Milton
#69. Our Lord Jesus was not above letting folk minister to Him, for he knew how happy it makes one to do aught for another. It's the happiest work in earth.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#70. And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit. For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.
Kahlil Gibran
#71. No man who knows aught, can be so stupid to deny that all men naturally were born free.
John Milton
#72. It's a mystery. A man's at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with. He can know his heart, but he don't want to. Rightly so. Best not to look in there.
Cormac McCarthy
#73. Take heed lest passion sway Thy judgement to do aught, which else free will Would not admit.
John Milton
#74. If there is aught of good in the style, it is the result of ceaseless toil in rewriting. Everything comes out wrong with me at first; but when once objectified I can torture and poke and scrape and pat it till it offends me no more.
William James
#76. By what criterion ... can we distinguish among the numberless effects, that are also causes, and among the causes that may, for aught we can know, be also effects, - how can we distinguish which are the means and which are the ends?
Chauncey Wright
#77. They love their land, because it is their own, And scorn to give aught other reason why; Would shake hands with a king upon his throne, And think it kindness to his majesty. - Fitz
Fitz-Greene Halleck
#80. If aught must be lost, 'twill be my honor for yours. If one must be forsaken, 'twill be my soul for yours. Should death come anon, 'twill be my life for yours. I am Given.
Karen Marie Moning
#81. A perfect marriage is as rare as a perfect love. Could it be otherwise, when both men and women are so imperfect? Could aught else be expected? Yet all do expect it.
Dinah Maria Murlock Craik
#82. Many things, for aught I know, may exist, whereof neither I nor any other man hath or can have any idea or notion whatsoever.
George Berkeley
#83. Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell >From heaven; for ev'n in heaven his looks and thoughts Were always downward bent, admiring more The riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold, Than aught divine or holy else enjoy'd In vision beatific.
John Milton
#84. - I won't go about to argue the point with you, - 'tis so, - and I am persuaded of it, madam, as much as can be, That both man and woman bear pain or sorrow, (and, for aught I know, pleasure too) best in a horizontal position.
Laurence Sterne
#85. If a well-constituted individual refrains from blazoning aught amiss or calamitous in his family, a nation in the like circumstance may without reproach be equally discreet.
Herman Melville
#86. One can know nothing of giving aught that is worthy to give unless one also knows how to take.
Havelock Ellis
#87. I will continue to write moral stories in rhymed couplets. But I should be thrice a fool if I did it for aught but my own entertainment.
W. Somerset Maugham
#88. Fortune's a right whore:
If she give aught, she deals it in small parcels,
That she may take away all at one swoop.
John Webster
