Quotable Quotations

You can find Previous Year Argumentative Essay Topics asked in ICSE board exams.

Quotable Quotations

Act now:
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! – H.W. Longfellow

Adversity:
Sweet are the uses of Which like the toad, ugly and venomous.
Wears yet a precious jewel on his head; – William Shakespear

Act now:
Live as if you were to die tomorrow.
Learn as if you were to live forever. – Mahatma Gandhi

Adversity:
Prosperity is the blessing of the old testament;
Adversity is the blessing of the new. – William Shakespeare (As you like it)

Adversity:
Prosperity doth best discover vice,
but adversity best discover virtue. – Francis Bacon

Advice:
Advice is seldom welcome; and those
who want it the most always want it the least. – Earl of Chesterfield

Age:
Crabbed age and youth cannot live together;
Youth is full of pleasance, age is full of care. – William Shakespeare(Poems)

Ambition:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff. – William Shakespeare (Julius Caesar)

Ambition:
That lowliness is young ambition’s ladder,
Where to the climber upward turns his face;
But when he once attains the upmost round,
He than unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend. – William Shakespeare

Ambitious:
As Caesar loved me, I weep for him;
as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it;
as he was valiant, I honour him,
but as he was ambitious, I slew him…
Who is there so base that would be a bondman?
If any speak, for him have I offended. – William Shakespeare(Julius Caesar)

Antagonist:
He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill.
Our antagonist is our helper. – Edmund Burke

Aptitude:
It’s your aptitude, not just your attitude that determines your altitude. – Zig Ziglar

Aptitude:
“Nothing can stop the man with the right;
mental attitude from achieving his goal;
nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.” – Thomas Jefferon

Ballot:
The ballot is stronger than the bullet. – Abraham Lincoln

Beauty:
Remember that the most beautiful things;
In the world are the most useless;
peacock and lilies for instance – John Ruskin

Beauty:
A thing of beauty is a joy forever.
Its loveliness increases; it will never,
Pass into nothingness. – John Keats

Beauty:
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty.”
That is all Ye knows on earth,
and all ye need to know. – John Keats

Beauty:

Beauty provoketh fools sooner than gold. – William Shakespeare

Beauty:
Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. – Margaret Hangerford

Book:
Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature,
Gods image; but he who destroys a good book.
Kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye. – John Milton

Book:
A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit,
embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. – John Milton

Book:
A good book is the best of friends, the same today and forever. – Martin Tupper

Book:
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed;
and some few to be chewed and digested – Francis Bacon

Borrower:
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend. – William Shakespeare(Hamlet)

Brevity:
Brevity is the soul of wit. – William Shakespeare(Hamlet)

Character:
But I am constant as the northern star
Of whose true fixed and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament. – William Shakespeare(Julius Caesar)

Character(Test):
Men have a touchstone whereby to try gold,
but gold is the touchstone whereby to try men. – Thomas Fuller

Character:
Watch your thoughts, they become words.
Watch your words they become action.
Watch your actions they become habits.
Watch your habits they become character.
Watch your character, it becomes your destiny. – Frank Outlaw

Change:
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. – Mahatma Gandhi

Child:
The child is father of the man,
And I would wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety. – William Wordsworth

Childhood:
I have had playmates,
I have had companions
In my days of childhood,
In my joyful schooldays
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces – Charles Lamb

Circumstances:
Man is not the creature of circumstances.
Circumstances are the creatures of man.

Communism:
From each according to his abilities
To each according to his needs. – Karl Marx

Courage:
It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare;
It is because we do not dare that they are difficult. – Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Cowards:
Cowards die many times before their death’s;
The valiant never taste of death but once. – William Shakespeare(Julius Caesar)

Credulity:
Credulity is the man’s weakness but the Child’s strength. – Charles Lamb

Crown /Power:
Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. – William Shakespeare(Henry IV)

Death:
For that which is born death is certain,
and for the dead birth is certain.
Therefore grieve not over that which is unavoidable. – Bhagavad-Gita

Death:
In this world nothing can be said to be certain,
except death and taxes. – Benjamin Franklin

Death:
All that live must die
Passing through nature to eternity – William Shakespeare(Hamlet)

Death:
A man can die but once; we owe God a death. – William Shakespeare(Henry IV)

Death:
When beggars die there are no comets seen;
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes. – William Shakespeare(Julius Caesar)

Death:
We then with brief Thanksgiving
Whatever God may be,
That no man lives forever,
That dead men rise up never,
That even the weariest river,
Winds somewhere safe to sea. – A.C. Swinburne

Death/Fate:
The glories of our blood and state
Are shadows not substantial things
There is no armour against fate
Death lays his icy hands on kings
Sceptre and crown
Must tumble down
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crooked scythe and spade. – James Shirley

Deeds:
We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, nor breaths.
In feeling, not in figures on a dial
We should count time by heartthrobs.
He most lives;
Who thinks most-feels the noblest-acts the best – P.J. Bailey

Deeds:
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies and fester smell far worse than weeds. – William Shakespeare(Poems)

Deeds(Good):
The evil that men do lives after them.
The good is oft interred with their bones. – William Shakespeare(Julius Caesar)

Deeds(Good):
How far that little candle throws his beams!
So shines a good deed in a naughty world. – William Shakespeare(Merchant of Venice)

Democracy:
A perfect democracy the most shameless thing in the world. – Edmund Burke

Democracy:
Government of the people, by the people,
and for the people, shall not perish from the earth. – Abraham Lincoln

Democracy:
You can fool all the people some of the time,
and some of the people all the time,
but you cannot fool all the people all the time. – Abraham Lincoln

Democracy:
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent;
Many for appointment by the corrupt few. – G. Bernard Shaw

Destiny:
I claim not to have controlled events,
but confess plainly that events have controlled me. – Abraham Lincoln

Destiny:
But yesterday the word of caesar might
Have stood against the world; now lies he there,
And none so poor to do him reverence. – William Shakespeare(Julius Caesar)

Devil:
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose – William Shakespeare(Merchant of Venice)

Dictators:
Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers,
which they dare not dismount.
And the tigers are getting hungry. – Winston Churchill

Diplomat:
A diplomat is a man who always remembers;
A woman’s birthday but never remembers her age. – Robert Frost

Discretion:
The better part of valour is discretion. – William Shakespeare(Henry IV)

Duty:
I slept and dreamt that life was beauty
I woke and found that life was duty. – Anonymous

Duty:
The woods are lovely, dark and deep
But I have promises to keep.
And miles to go before I sleep. – Robert Frost

Education:
T’is education form the common mind
Just as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined. – Alexander Pope

Education:
Education make a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive;
easy to govern but impossible to enslave. – Lord Biougham

Experience:
Experience is a hard teacher because;
she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards. – V S Law

Experience:
You cannot acquire experience by making experiments.
You cannot create experience.
You must undergo it. – Albert Camus

Fools:
For fools rush in where angels fear to tread. – Alexander Pope

Failure:
Success is the ability;
to go from one failure to another;
with no loss of enthusiasm. – Winston Churchill

Forgive:
To err is human, to forgive is divine. – Alexander Pope

Friend:
I shot an arrow into the air
It fell to earth I know not where
And the song from beginning to end
I found again in the heart of a friend. – H.W. Longfellow

Friend:
Forsake not an old friend, for the new is not comparable to him.
A new friend is as new wine; when it is old, thou shall drink it with pleasure. – Anonymous

Friend:
A faithful friend is a medicine of life. – Anonymous

Friend:
Some great misfortune to potend,
No enemy can match a friend. – Jonathan Swift

Genius:
Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety nine percent perspiration. – Anonymous

Glories:
Glories like glow-worms, afar off shine bright,
But looked to near, have neither heat nor light. – John Webster

Goal:
If one does not know to which port one is sailing,
no wind is favourable. – Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Goal:
A man without a goal is like a ship without a rudder. – Thomas Carlyle

God:
God moves in a mysterious way,
He wonders to perform;
He plants his footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm. – William Cowper

God:
Judge not the lord by feeble sense,
But trust him for his grace;
Behind a frowning providence,
He hides a smiling face. – William Cowper

God:
In the beginning;
God created the heaven and the earth,
And God said, Let there be light;
and there was light.
So God created man in his own image,
In the image of God he him;
male and female created he then – Bible

Government:
Every nation has the government that it deserves. – Anonymous

Government:
No government can be long secure without a formidable opposition. – Benjamin Disraeli

Greed:
The love of money is the root of all evil. – Timothy

Guild:
Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood;
Clean from my hand?
No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Make the green one red. – William Shakespeare(Macbeth)

Happiness:
Some cause happiness wherever they go,
others whenever they go. – Oscar Wilde

Imperfect(Beauty):
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud;
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun. – William Shakespeare(Poems)

Jealousy:
O! beware, my lord, of jealousy,
It is the green eyed monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds On. – William Shakespeare(Othello)

Kindness:
Little deeds of kindness, little words of love
Help to make earth happy, like the heaven above. – Julia Carney

Labour(fruits):
No gain, no palm, no thorn, no throne;
No gall, No glory; no cross, no crown – William Penn

Law:
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law – Oliver Goldsmith

Law:
Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed;
too severe seldom executed. – Benjamin Franklin

Leadership:
“Remember the difference between a boss and a leader;
a boss says “Go!” – a leader says “Let’s go!” – E.M. Kelly

Leadership:
“Leadership is based on inspiration, not
domination; on cooperation, not intimidation.” – William Wood

Life:
Tell me not in mournful numbers
Life is but an empty dream
For the soul is dead and slumbers
And things are not what they seem. – H. W. Longfellow

Life:
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal.
Dust thou art, to dust returnest
Was not spoken of the soul. – H. W. Longfellow

Life:
Life is brief – a little hope,
a little dream and then goodnight. – Leon Montenaaeken

Life:
This life at best is as an inn
And we the passengers – James Howell

Little Neglect:
A little neglect may breed mischief…
for want of a nail the shoe was lost;
for want of a shoe the horse was lost;
and for want of a horse the rider was lost. – Benjamin Franklin

Little Things:
Little drops of water, little grain of sand
Make the mighty ocean, and the pleasant land
So the little minutes, humble may though be
Make the mighty ages of eternity. – Julia Carney

Man(Patriotic):
Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said?
This is my own, my native land! – Sir Walter Scott

Man(Positive thinking):
Life’s battle don’t always go
To the stronger or faster man,
But sooner or later the man
who wins is the man who thinks he can – H.W. Longfellow

Man(Good):
Bad men live to eat and drink,
where as good men eat and drink in order to live. – Socrates

Man(Good):
Nothing can harm a good man,
either in life or death. – Socrates

Man(Honest):
An honest man’s the noblest work of God.- Alexander Pope

Man(Patriotic):
Never in the field of human conflict was
So much owed by so many to so few. – Winston Churchill

Manners:
A gentle mind by gentle deeds is known,
For a man by nothing is so well betrayed,
As by his manners. – Edmund Spenser

Men(Great):
The height by great men reached and kept.
Were not attained by sudden flight.
But, they while their companion slept.
Were toiling upwards in the night. – H. W. Longfellow

Men(Great):
Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime
And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time. – H. W. Longfellow

Men(Great):
Be not afraid of greatness;
some men are born great,
some achieve greatness;
and some have greatness thrust upon them. – William Shakespeare(Twelfth Night)

Men(Great):
No great men live in vain.
The history of the world is but the biography of great men. – Thomas Carlyle

Mercy:
The quality of mercy is not strained
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath; It is twice blessed;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. – William Shakespeare (Merchant of Venice)

Mind:
The mind is its own place and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. – John Milton

Miser:
They are as sick that surfeit with too much,
as they that starve with nothing. – William Shakespeare(Merchant of Venice)

Misery:
Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows. – William Shakespeare(Tempest)

Money:
Money can’t buy happiness, but neither can poverty – Leo Rosten

Money:
Money is like a sixth sense without which;
you cannot make complete use of the other five – W Somerset Maugham

Mother:
The hand that rocks the cradle
Is the hand that rules the world. – W. R. Wallace

Name:
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet. – William Shakespeare(Romeo and Juliet)

Nature:
Accuse not nature, she hath done her part;
Do thou but thine. – John Milton

Nature:
All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body nature is, and God the soul. – Alexander Pope

Nature:
For men may come and men may go.
But I go on forever. – Lord Tennyson

Nature:
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd.
A host of golden daffodils – William Wordsworth

Nature:
My heart leaps up when
I behold A rainbow in the sky. – William Wordsworth

Nature:
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our power;
Little we see in Nature that is ours; – William Wordsworth

Nature/(Solitude):
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way Ten thousand
saw I at a glance
Tossing their head in sprightly dance…
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude. – William Wordsworth

News:
When a dog bites a man that is not news,
but when a man bites a dog that is news. – Charles A. Dana

Newspapers:
Newspapers always excite curiosity.
No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment. – Charles Lamb

Oblivion:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen
And waste its sweetness on the desert air. – Thomas Gray

Opportunity:
Opportunity is missed by most people
because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work. – Thomas Alva Edison

Patience:
Though the mills of God grind slowly,
‘yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience;
He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all. – H. W. Longfellow

Patriotism:
Happy the man whose wish and care.
A few paternal acres abound,
Content to breathe his native air In his own ground. – Alexander Pope

Peace:
Peace hath her victories No less renown than war.
For what can war, but endless war still breed? – John Milton

Perseverance:
If you wish success in life,
make perseverance your bosom friend,
experience your wise counselor caution,
your elder brother and hope your guardian genius – Joseph Addison

Politics:
He knows nothing;
and he thinks he knows everything
That points clearly to a political career. – G. Bernard Shaw

Power:
Power tends to corrupt,
and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely.
Great men are almost always bad men. – Lord Aston

Power:
The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse. – Edmund Burke

Progress:
The reasonable man adopts himself to the world;
The unreasonable one persists;
In trying to adapt the world to himself.
Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. – G. Bernard Shaw

Propaganda/Greater Lie:
The greater masses of the people will more easily fall;
Victims to a great lie than to a small one. – Adolf Hitler

Read:
Read not to contradict and confute;
nor to believe and take for granted,
nor to find talk and discourse,
but to weigh and consider. – Francis Bacon

Reading:
Reading maketh a full man;
conference a ready man;
and writing an exact man. – Francis Bacon

Regin:
Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven – John Milton

Religion:
Man is by his constitution a religious animal – Edmund Burke

Religion:
Men will wrangle for religion; write for it;
fight for it; anything but – live for it. – Charles Colton

Religion:
There is only one religion though;
There are a hundred versions of it. – G. Bernard Shaw

Religion:
We have just enough religion to make us hate,
but not enough to make us love one another. – Jonathan Swift

Religion:
Educate men without religion and you make them but clever devils.- Arthur Wellesley

Religion:
Extreme remedies are most appropriate for extreme diseases. – Hippocrates

Reputation:
Reputation, reputation, reputation! O!
I have lost my reputation,
I have lost the immortal part of myself,
and what remains is bestial – William Shakespeare (Othello)

Reputation:
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed. – William Shakespeare (Othello)

Superstition:
Superstition is the religion of feeble minds – Edmund Burke

Though:
There is nothing either good or bad.
But thinking makes it so. – William Shakespeare(Hamlet)

Time Management:
“Guard well your spare moments.
They are like uncut diamonds.
Discard them and their value will never be known.
Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Travel:
Travel in the younger sort, is a part of education;
In the elder a part of experience. – Francis Bacon

Triumph:
Not in the clamour of crowded street
Not in the shouts of plaudits of the throng.
But in ourselves, are triumph and defeats. – H. W. Longfellow

Truth:
He who considers this (Self) as a slayer
or he who thinks that this (Self) is slain,
neither of these know the Truth.
For it does not slay, nor is it slain – Bhagavad-Gita

Unity:
Yes we must indeed,
hang together or, most assuredly,
we shall all hang separately. – Benjamin Franklin

Violence:
An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind. – Mahatma Gandhi

Virtue:
There is however, a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue. – Edmund Burke

Virtue:
Virtue may be assailed. But never hurt.
Surprised by unjust force, but not enthralled. – John Milton

Virtues:
Men’s evil manners live in brass;
their virtues We write in water. – William Shakespeare (Henry VIII)

Wealth(Harmful):
Superfluity comes sooner by white hair,
But competence lives longer. – William Shakespeare (Merchant of Venice)

Wealth:
If we command our wealth,
we shall be rich and free,
if our wealth commands us,
we are poor indeed. – Edmund Burke

Wisdom:
Knowledge comes but wisdom lingers. – Lord Tennyson

Woman:
A man is as old as he’s feeling
A woman is as old as she looks – Mortimer Collins

Words:
Words are like leaves; and where they most abound
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found. – Alexander Pope

World/Stage:
All the world a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts. – William Shakespeare(As you like it)

Writing:
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance.
As those move easiest who have learnt to dance – Alexander Pope

Youth:
His best companions, innocence and health;
And his best riches ignorance and wealth.
How happy he who crowns in shades like these
A Youth of labour with an age of ease. – Oliver Goldsmith