Top 100 Oft Quotes
#2. I am deeply spiritual; I revel in those things that make for good - the things that we can do to shed a little light, to help place an oft-dissonant universe back in tune with itself ... Long live art, long live friendship, long live the joy of life!
Jessye Norman
#3. There was a Being whom my spirit oft
Met on its visioned wanderings far aloft.
A seraph of Heaven, too gentle to be human,
Veiling beneath that radiant form of woman ...
Percy Bysshe Shelley
#4. A thing of beauty is a joy forever: It's loveliness increases: it will never pass into nothingness. Pleasure is oft a visitant, but pain clings cruelty to us.
John Keats
#5. It comes to pass oft that a terrible oath, with a swaggering accent sharply twanged off, gives manhood more approbation than ever proof itself would have earned him.
William Shakespeare
#6. Our doubts are traitors and make us
lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt. In other words, a
wish is a good place to start but then you have to get off your butt and make it
happen. You have to pick up a quill and write your own damn story. (Mimi Wallingford)
Suzanne Selfors
#7. By oft repeating an untruth, men come to believe it themselves.
Thomas Jefferson
#8. He that strives to touch the starts, oft stumbles at a straw.
Edmund Spenser
#9. Slavery of the heart, oh Love - a prisoner of will thou art - proof that love, while blissful, can oft also be Hell. Demonstrative definition thou art, that love can be strategic as well!
Christina Engela
#10. William Shakespeare put it this way, Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.
Earl Nightingale
#12. Of lunacy,
Innumerous were the causes; humbled pride,
Ambition disappointed, riches lost,
And bodily disease, and sorrow, oft
By man inflicted on his brother man;
Sorrow, that, made the reason drunk, and yet
Left much untasted. So the cup was fill'd.
Robert Pollok
#13. The only times during my religious instruction I remember hearing God's name invoked with any sincere conviction at all was in the oft-repeated and breathtakingly chauvinistic claim that Israel's 'miraculous' military victories over much-stronger enemies proved that He was ever on Zion's side.
Rick Perlstein
#14. We oft question and compare ... Is the journey so important or the getting there?
John McLeod
#16. Three blind mice ... three blind mice, See how they run, See how they runt
They all run after the farmer's wife, She cut oft their tails with a carving
knife, Did you ever see such a sight in your life, As three ... blind ... mice?
Daniel Keyes
#17. And most wonderful of all are words, and how they make friends one with another, being oft associated, until not even obituary notices them do part.
O. Henry
#20. Where dost thou careless lie, Buried in ease and sloth? Knowledge that sleeps, doth die; And this security, It is the common moth, That eats on wits and arts, and oft destroys them both.
Ben Jonson
#21. Have you not heard it said full oft,
A woman's nay doth stand for naught?
William Shakespeare
#22. Twice or thrice had I loved thee before I knew thy face or name, so in a voice, so in a shapeless flame, angels affect us oft, and worshiped be.
John Donne
#23. The vanity of teaching doth oft tempt a man to forget that he is a blockhead.
George Savile
#24. He oft finds med'cine, who his griefe imparts;
But double griefs afflict concealing harts,
As raging flames who striveth to supresse.
Edmund Spenser
#25. Reason, indeed, may oft complain For Nature's sad reality, And tell the suffering heart how vain Its cherished dreams must always be; And Truth may rudely trample down The flowers of Fancy, newly-blown:
Charlotte Bronte
#26. The same that oft-times hath
charm'd magic casements,
opening on the foam
of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn.
John Keats
#27. How oft review; each finding, like a friend, Something to blame, and something to commend.
George Eliot
#29. The chance of war Is equal, and the slayer oft is slain.
Homer
#30. Tis beauty that doth oft make women proud; but, God He knows, thy share thereof is small.
William Shakespeare
#31. Tadark, this phrase is probably meaningless to you as it is so oft repeated, but do be quiet.
Cayla Kluver
#33. Heavenly Father and Mother, make us thankful for all the blessings of this life, and make us ever mindful of the patient hands that oft in weariness spread our tables and prepare our daily food. For humanity's sake, Amen.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
#35. Sharing oft leaves less.
But with love the more we share,
the fuller our hearts.
J. Benson
#36. And he that strives to touch the stars
Oft stumbles at a straw.
Edmund Spenser
#37. Our heart oft times wakes when we sleep, and God can speak to that, either by words, by proverbs, by signs and similitudes, as well as if one was awake.
John Bunyan
#38. Oft as by chance, a little while apart The pall of empty, loveless hours withdrawn, Sweet Beauty, opening on the impoverished heart, Beams like a jewel on the breast of dawn.
Alan Seeger
#39. We have careful thought for the stranger,
And smiles for the sometime guest;
But oft for 'our own' the bitter tone,
Though we love our own the best.
Margaret E. Sangster
#40. Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving.
William Shakespeare
#41. Courtesy which oft is found in lowly sheds, with smoky rafters, than in tapestry halls and courts of princes, where it first was named.
John Milton
#44. O thou who passest through our valleys in Thy strength, curb thy fierce steeds, allay the heat That flames from their large nostrils! Thou, O Summer, Oft pitchest here thy golden tent, and oft Beneath our oaks hast slept, while we beheld With joy thy ruddy limbs and flourishing hair.
William Blake
#45. Lovers may never meet again, but the ways of enemies oft do intersect: This proves some corollary about gravity.
William T. Vollmann
#48. They say night's beauties fade at dawn, and the children of wine are oft disowned in the morning light.
George R R Martin
#49. With caution judge of probability. Things deemed unlikely, e'en impossible, experience oft hath proved to be true.
William Shakespeare
#50. Oft in the silence of the night,
When the lonely moon rides high,
When wintry winds are whistling,
And we hear the owl's shrill cry,
In the quiet, dusky chamber,
By the flickering firelight,
Rising up between two sleepers,
Comes a spirit all in white.
Louisa May Alcott
#51. How oft a summer shower has started me; to seek the shelter of a hollow tree
John Clare
#52. The boy may wrestle, when Night
working Fancy steals him to the arms Of nymph oft wish'd awake, and, 'mid the rage Of the soft tumult, ev'ry turgid cell Spontaneous disembogues its lucid store, Bland and of azure tinct.
John Armstrong
#53. Neither a borrower nor a lender be, for loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
William Shakespeare
#54. Safeguarding the interests of our Taiwan compatriots and expanding their well-being is the mainland's oft-repeated pledge and solemn promise of the new leaders of China's Communist Party central committee.
Xi Jinping
#56. Shakespeare said only our bad deeds live after us," Victoria, the smart one, said. "The good is oft interred with their bones.
Paul Levine
#57. Blah, blah, blah. Demon boy, I can't speak that language. Furthermore, I don't want to pollute my brain by learning it. So it's time for you to learn mine. First lesson-I'm Say-been. I'm oft described as byoo-tee-full and mah-jest'ick.
Kresley Cole
#59. Sweet bird that shunn'st the nose of folly, Most musical, most melancholy! Thee, chauntress, oft, the woods among, I woo, to hear thy even-song.
John Milton
#60. Though authority be a stubborn bear, yet he is oft let by the nose with gold.
William Shakespeare
#63. Oft times, anger was all I had, my sole defining characteristic. It clung to me like an insecure girlfriend, and I put as little effort into sloughing it off.
Bobby Adair
#64. Blind fear, that seeing reason leads, finds safer footing than blind reason stumbling without fear: to fear the worst oft cures the worse.
William Shakespeare
#65. So oft in theologic wars, The disputants, I ween, Rail on in utter ignorance Of what each other mean, And prate about an Elephant Not one of them has seen!
John Godfrey Saxe
#68. Oft morning dreams presage approaching fate, For morning dreams, as poets tell, are true.
Michael Bruce
#69. All is best, though we oft doubt, what the unsearchable dispose, of highest wisdom brings about.
John Milton
#70. The feathered arrow of satire has oft been wet with the heart's blood of its victims.
Benjamin Disraeli
#72. Many are the strange chances of the world,' said Mithrandir, 'and help oft shall come from the hands of the weak when the Wise falter.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#73. Oh! Many a time and oft had Harold loved, or dream'd he'd loved since Rapture is a dream.
George Gordon Byron
#74. My thoughts, imprisoned in my secret woes, with flamy breaths do issue oft in sound.
Philip Sidney
#75. A show of daring oft conceals great fear.
Lucan
#76. They best can judge a poet's worth, Who oft themselves have known The pangs of a poetic birth By labours of their own.
William Cowper
#77. And she began the oft-told tale of a lady of imperial descent who could find no husband in the narrow circle where her pride permitted her to mate, and had lived on unwed, her age now thirty, and would die unwed, for no one would have her now.
E. M. Forster
#78. It has oft been said that physicians make the worst patients, but it is the opinion of This Author that any man makes a terrible patient. One might say it takes patience to be a patient, and heaven knows, the males of our species lack an abundance of patience.
Julia Quinn
#79. In hours of bliss we oft have met:
They could not always last;
And though the present I regret,
I'm grateful for the past.
William Congreve
#80. Yet sighes, deare sighes, indeeds true friends you are
That do not leave your left friend at the wurst,
But, as you with my breast, I oft have nurst
So, gratefull now, you waite upon my care.
Philip Sidney
#81. Who cannot but see oftentimes how strange the threads of our destiny run? Oft it is only for a moment the favorable instant is presented. We miss it, and months and years are lost.
Johann Ludwig Tieck
#82. Tis gold Which buys admittance
oft it doth
yea, and makes Diana's rangers false themselves, yield up This deer to th' stand o' th' stealer: and 'tis gold Which makes the true man kill'd and saves the thief, Nay, sometimes hangs both thief and true man.
William Shakespeare
#83. Now, who can call 'Good Friday' good? - A term too oft misunderstood - You, who were bought by the blood of His cross, You can call 'Good Friday' good.
Johnny Hart
#84. rest, if you must. Yet do not cast all hope away. Tomorrow is unknown. Rede oft is found at the rising of the Sun.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#85. Poets like painters, thus unskilled to trace The naked nature and the living grace, With gold and jewels cover ev'ry part, And hide with ornaments their want of art. True wit is Nature to advantage dressed, What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed.
Alexander Pope
#86. Though men determine, the gods doo dispose: and oft times many things fall out betweene the cup and the lip.
Robert Greene
#87. There is in stillness oft a magic power To calm the breast when struggling passions lower, Touched by its influence, in the soul arise Diviner feelings, kindred with the skies.
John Henry Newman
#89. A Man must make his opportunity,as oft as find it
Francis Bacon
#90. A truth told once is no match for a lie oft repeated.
James Rozoff
#91. But satire, ever moral, ever new, Delights the reader and instructs him, too. She, if good sense refine her sterling page, Oft shakes some rooted folly of the age.
Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux
#92. And therefore is love said to be a child, Because in choice he is so oft beguil'd
William Shakespeare
#94. Oaths be of the heart, and he that breaketh them in open fact is oft, as now, no breaker in truth, for already were they scorned and trampled on by his opposites.
E.R. Eddison
#95. Sometimes in television, if there are storylines that are oft-told, people can be hypercritical of them.
Patrick Dempsey
#96. Thy friendship oft has made my heart to ache: do be my enemy for friendship's sake.
William Blake
#97. Oft has it been my lot to mark A proud, conceited, talking spark.
James Merrick
#98. Fain would I wed a fair young man that night and day could please me, When my mind or body grieved that had the power to ease me. Maids are full of longing thoughtsthat breed a bloodless sickness, And that, oft I hear men say, is only cured by quickness.
Thomas Campion
#99. If two lives join, there is oft a scar. They are one and one, with a shadowy third; One near one is too far.
Robert Browning
#100. In the corrupted currents of this world
Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice,
And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law. . .
(Claudius, from Hamlet, Act 3, scene 3)
William Shakespeare
