Top 100 Set Down Quotes
#1. It may be that this autobiography [Aimee Semple McPherson's] is set down in sincerity, frankness, and simple effort. It may be, too, that the Statue of Liberty is situated in Lake Ontario.
Dorothy Parker
#2. Since his inauguration in 2009, President Obama has upheld FDR's vision of America as a nation that keeps its word - a nation still committed to uphold the 'four freedoms' that President Roosevelt set down in the great Atlantic Charter of August 1941.
Nigel Hamilton
#3. Why is it that reality, when set down untransposed in a book, sounds false?
Simone Weil
#5. A leveller has long ago been set down as a ridiculous and chimerical being, who, if he could finish his work to-day, would have to begin it again tomorrow.
Charles Caleb Colton
#6. Let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them.
William Shakespeare
#7. A book unwritten is a delightful universe of infinite possibilities. Set down one word, however, and it immediately becomes earthbound. Set down one sentence and it's halfway to being just like every other bloody book that's ever been written.
Robert Harris
#8. If we don't get violent with ourselves, castigate ourselves, ostracize ourselves and excommunicate ourselves because we didn't live up to the standards we set down for ourselves, then maybe we don't have to do that with other people.
Frederick Lenz
#9. The Sun and the science are the same; when they set down, the darkness comes!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#10. I set down in a chair by the window and tried to think of something cheerful, but it warn't no use. I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead.
Mark Twain
#11. The whole point of straws, I had thought, was that you did not have to set down the slice of pizza to suck a dose of Coke while reading a paperback.
Nicholson Baker
#12. The only way to compose myself and collect my thoughts," he wrote in his diary,"is to set down at my table, place my diary before me, and take my pen into my hand.
David McCullough
#13. I shall set down in a few lines how upright Maldoror was during his early years, when he lived happy. There: done.
Comte De Lautreamont
#14. Um ... perhaps I will go with Grandfather, Nilima said. She set down the scissors, looked at my expression, and then changed her mind and took them with her.
Colleen Houck
#15. You're suggesting I should write of our experience? How? If I set down every word of the exchange between us during an hour, it would be unintelligible unless I wrote the story of my life to explain it.
Doris Lessing
#16. Far better to be in places where words do what you want them to and where blood doesn't smell because it's set down in ink on the page; history
Rafael Chirbes
#17. I love a ballad but even too well if it be doleful matter merrily set down, or a very pleasant thing indeed and sung lamentably.
William Shakespeare
#18. The storm in our private lives had picked him up and put him out of place. Me, too. I, too, had been picked up from one place and set down in another. I, too, had been stranded. We both needed help resettling.
E.L. Konigsburg
#19. Let him have all the perfections in the world, I think it ought not be set down as certain that he must be acceptable to every women he may happen to like himself.
Jane Austen
#20. Shun to seek what is hid in the womb of the morrow, and set down as gain in life's ledger whatever time fate shall have granted thee.
Horace
#21. From the first place of liquid darkness, within the second place of air and light, I set down the following record with its mixture of fact and truths and memories of truths and its direction always toward the Third Place, where the starting point is myth.
Janet Frame
#22. The first story I can remember writing, that I truly set down on paper, was a Christmas story that I wrote when I was ten years old.
Greg Rucka
#23. I am sensible that he who means to do mankind a real service must set down with the determination of putting up, and bearing with all their faults, follies, prejudices and mistakes until he can convince them that he is right.
Thomas Paine
#24. My short stories are like soft shadows I have set out in the world, faint footprints I have left. I remember exactly where I set down each and every one of them, and how I felt when I did. Short stories are like guideposts to my heart ...
Haruki Murakami
#25. 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
#26. As with many people, Charles, who could not talk, wrote with fullness. He set down his loneliness and his perplexities, and he put on paper many things he did not know about himself.
John Steinbeck
#27. For my own part, I have never had a thought which I could not set down in words, with even more distinctness than that with which I conceived it.
Edgar Allan Poe
#28. They set down all their knowledge on bits of leather or waxed wood or tablets of stone and think that is wisdom. What good does it do a piece of stone to have knowledge? ... know it is the understanding graven in the heart that makes men wise.
Marion Zimmer Bradley
#30. I make no claims. I have set down the facts; and the only warning advice or admonition I have to give is that any person who makes up his mind to try this method and things he isn't in for the hardest struggle of his life would do well not to try. This isn't frolic. It's a fight.
Samuel G. Blythe
#31. Back then I was still appalled that God would set down his barefoot boy and girl dollies into an Eden where, presumably, He had just turned loose elephantiasis and microes that eat the human cornea. Now I understand, God is not just rooting fo the dollies.
Barbara Kingsolver
#32. Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning.
Maya Angelou
#33. We are torn out of our own existence and set down in the midst of the holy history of God on earth. There God dealt with us, and there he still deals with us, our needs and our sins, in judgment and grace.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#34. Put aside your pride,
Set down your arrogance,
And remember your grave.
Ali Ibn Abi Talib
#35. There was one thing Felix had denied her. One prohibition he'd set down - which made it something to fixate on and wonder about.
What was so secret about suite 3013?
Sarah Cross
#36. I wished only to be set down in Canada, and take one honest walk there as I might in Concord woods of an afternoon.
Henry David Thoreau
#37. and the owl made a noise with very little resemblance in it to the noise conventionally assigned to the owl by men-poets. But it is the obstinate custom of such creatures hardly ever to say what is set down for them.
Charles Dickens
#38. Gone to Kansas City, Nick thought. For all I know, that could be it, too. Everybody left on the poor sad planet picked up by the Hand of God and either rocked in the everlasting harms of Same or set down again in Kansas City.
Stephen King
#39. When you set down the path to create art, whatever sort of art it is, understand that the path is neither short not easy. That means you must determine if the route is worth the effort. If it's not, dream bigger.
Seth Godin
#40. a mammy's boy who never married and who keeps a shotgun in case of trespassers, but loves his trees, loves his woodland, and honors a covenant set down by his great-uncle, which was that no tree should ever be wantonly cut down.
Edna O'Brien
#41. There is a great deal of work that can be done between the SDLP representing the Nationalist population and the Unionist Parties, and I believe we should set down to do that.
Dick Spring
#42. Those who taught you were wrong. I have never set down a "right" or "wrong," a "do" or a "don't." To do so would be to strip you completely of your greatest gift - the opportunity to do as you please.
Neale Donald Walsch
#43. I, indeed, following the true law of history, have never set down any fact that I have not learned from trustworthy speakers or writers.
William Of Malmesbury
#44. The alphabet was one thing when applied to clay or stone, and quite another when set down on light papyrus.
Marshall McLuhan
#45. You are never tired of painting, because you have to set down not what you know already, but what you have just discovered.
William Hazlitt
#46. Traveling light gives me a way to set down what would otherwise be the baggage of someone else' decision to cling to well-worn path.
Brandan Roberston
#47. It is easier to recount grievances and slights than it is to set down a broad redress of such grievances and slights. The reason is that one fears to be thought of as an arrant braggart.
Elizabeth Kenny
#48. One must withdraw for a time from life in order to set down that picture.
John Steinbeck
#49. He remembers the five rules of combat set down by Chuan Tzu - faith, companions, time, space and strategy.
Paulo Coelho
#50. After all, there is no advice which I can give you which you will not find plainly set down in the Book your mother taught you to reverence and love; and I therefore commend you to God, and to the word of His grace.
George E. Sargent
#51. Lord Bacon said, "Writing makes an exact man." He spoke the truth. Writing produces exactitude by forcing you to set down ideas in logical relation to one another. Writing crystallizes your thoughts and makes your ideas specific.
John Haggai
#52. Just g'wan back home and set down on yo' royal diasticutis and say nothin'.
Zora Neale Hurston
#53. Let what I here set down meet with correction or applause, it shall be of equal welcome and utility to me [...]And yet, always submitting to the authority of their
censure, which has an absolute power over me, I thus rashly venture at everything.
Michel De Montaigne
#54. When he grew tall enough to peep through the keyhole of the great lock of the main door, he had divers times set down his father's dinner, or supper, to get on as it might on the outer side thereof, while he stood taking cold in one eye by dint of peeping at her through that airy perspective.
Charles Dickens
#55. But why didn't you just ask me?" I set down my fork and glare at her.
"Because you were sleeping," She says, taking a sip if Chardonnay.
"I was taking a nap, Mom. It wasn't intended to be some kind of Disney fairy-tale hundred-year snooze.
Alyson Noel
#56. But it was like wearing a size five sneakers when your foot is a seven- you can get by for a few steps, and then you set down and pull off the shoes because it just plain much
Jodi Picoult
#57. You go for a man hard and fast enough and he don't have time to think about how many is with him, he thinks about himself and how he may get clear out of the wrath that is about to set down on him.
Charles Portis
#58. He was my father. I own half his genes, and all of his history. Believe this: the mistakes are part of the story. I am born of a man who believed he could tell nothing but the truth, while he set down for all time the Poisonwood Bible.
Barbara Kingsolver
#59. Even if I play backgammon with my coach, I hate to lose. I won't talk to him for, like, an hour. So imagine how it feels when you lose at tennis. That makes me determined not to lose because I hate it so much. Even at a set down and match point, I always believe I can come back.
Ana Ivanovic
#60. The shorter the hours, the larger the income. Don't get into the habit of putting in long hours or you may be set down into a permanent subordinate position.
George Ade
#61. Finding these events set down in the history book did not change her mind in the least, all the textbook did was collect together the free-flowing fantasies of the person who had written it, and there was clearly little difference between those fantasies and the ones you could find in a novel.
Jose Saramago
#62. I went down to the river, I set down on the bank. I tried to think but couldn't, So I jumped in and sank.
Langston Hughes
#63. It is good to know what you are doing. The man with his pickled fish has set down one truth and has recorded in his experience many lies. The fish is not that color, that texture, that dead, nor does he smell that way.
John Steinbeck
#64. We set down feasts for each other and treated our love with tongues of fire. Our bodies were fields of wonder to us.
Pat Conroy
#65. Do you set down your name in the scroll of youth, that are written down old with all the characters of age?
William Shakespeare
#66. But as I have resolved to set down a full account here, so I must begin with an honest accounting of myself. That morning, I was afraid.
Geraldine Brooks
#67. I would like to see every single soldier on every single side, just take off your helmet, unbuckle your kit, lay down your rifle, and set down at the side of some shady lane, and say, nope, I aint a gonna kill nobody. Plenty of rich folks wants to fight. Give them the guns.
Woody Guthrie
#68. You can't set down and stand up at the same time, each situation has its advantages, but you can't be in both places at once ... it can't be did.
Marietta Holley
#69. Mr. Zweig always encouraged his friends to set down their reminiscences, not necessarily for publication but for the pleasure and benefit of their children, their families. In his opinion every life includes inner or external experiences worthy of record.
Stefan Zweig
#70. We are drawn to certain locations where the land resonates with us and pulls us towards it. People can spend their entire lives looking for the places where they belong, places where they feel at home, where they fit and can comfortably set down roots.
Mary Reynolds
#71. To know yourself you have only to set down a true statement of those that ever loved or hated you.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#72. I would have touched it like a child But knew my finger could but have touched Cold stone and water. I grew wild, Even accusing heaven because It had set down among its laws: Nothing that we love over-much Is ponderable to our touch.
William Butler Yeats
#73. Adversity, if a man is set down to it by degrees, is more supportable with equanimity by most people than any great prosperity arrived at in a single lifetime.
Samuel Butler
#74. I was set down from the carrier's cart at the age of three; and there with a sense of bewilderment and terror my life in the village began.
Laurie Lee
#75. 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
#76. 99 per cent of your life recognises things without definition, a baby recognises its mother's face without having it defined. It's just an arbitrary rule this rule of definition that Socrates set down.
Robert M. Pirsig
#77. Cease to ask what the morrow
will bring forth,
and set down as gain
each day that fortune grants.
Horace
#78. Let it go, just let it go, but if I set down that weight what will show my arms they are strong?
Tyler Knott Gregson
#79. Dorothy did not feel nearly so bad as you might think a little girl who had been so suddenly whisked away from her own country and set down in the middle of a strange land
L. Frank Baum
#80. Does your friend ever say anything?' the fat man asked. Aloom set down the piece of bread he had just rolled round several chunks of meat and gave an exasperated sigh.
'I heard him say oops! once, when he cut the ears off someone who was asking too many questions.
John Flanagan
#81. The past is set down in a thousand thousand indelible scrolls. But the future is a blank parchment forever in wait of a present.
Andrew Levkoff
#82. There is one thing I don't think any one has ever set down although it is true - to a monster, everyone else is a monster.
John Steinbeck
#83. Made by Hand is impossible to set down once you start reading it.
James Gurney
#84. I set down a beautiful chord on paper - and suddenly it rusts.
Alfred Schnittke
#85. I think the Duke of Buckingham is the cause of all our miseries, and till the King be informed thereof, we shall never go out with honor, or sit with honor here. That man is the grievance of grievances. Let us set down the causes of all our disasters and they will all reflect upon him.
Edward Coke
#86. Women are an alien race set down among us.
John Updike
#87. It's not as if I knew answers which I am going to set down in the form of a novel or a memoir or a sermon. It's, rather, I'm going to search myself for what I might have to say in this area.
Frederick Buechner
#88. She was quick of mind and swift of tongue, always ready to answer a set down with the kind of witty rebuke most of us can think of only long after the moment of insult has passed.
Geraldine Brooks
#89. (aside) Oh, you are well tuned now,
But I'll set down the pegs that make this music,
As honest as I am.
William Shakespeare
#90. How can the poem and the stink and the grating noise - the quality of light, the tone, the habit and the dream - be set down alive?
John Steinbeck
#91. But only the witnesses feel fear, a maddening fear, for what they could bring to light is even larger than the sun that is measured and gauged and set down down in a study.
Ingeborg Bachmann
#92. Historians desiring to write the actions of men, ought to set down the simple truth, and not say anything for love or hatred; also to choose such an opportunity for writing as it may be lawful to think what they will, and write what they think, which is a rare happiness of the time.
Walter Raleigh
#93. The motif must always be set down in a simple way, easily grasped and understood by the beholder. By the elimination of superfluous detail, the spectator should be led along the road that the artist indicates to him, and from the first be made to notice what the artist has felt.
Alfred Sisley
#94. He set down his chili dog, and after a pondering moment of silence, he replied with words of wisdom I'd never forget: "Fuck women. Fuck school. Fuck money. Go write some books, get a good agent, lift weights, get tattoos, and never do a film with Keanu Reeves.
Jon Konrath
#95. There was nothing in store at Undershaw for his lordship but a set-down, but it was disappointing to be granted no opportunity to deliver this.
Georgette Heyer
#96. Raindrops beat against the glass, blurring street lights alongside the road that stretch off into the distance at identical intervals as if they'd been set down to measure the earth. A
Haruki Murakami
#97. Pictures ... are also opinions ... [they] set down what the camera operator sees and he sees what he wants to see and what he loves and hates and pities and is proud of.
John Steinbeck
#98. Predictions of surprising events always prove more accurate if not set down on paper beforehand.
Carl Sagan
#99. Anyone who seeks for the true causes of miracles, and strives to understand natural phenomena as an intelligent being, and not to gaze at them like a fool, is set down and denounced as an impious heretic.
Baruch Spinoza
#100. Don't be a cynic, and bewail and bemoan. Omit the negative propositions. Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good. Set down nothing that will help somebody.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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