Quotes about change
Nothing stays put, and these writers noticed. Quotes about change, growth and new beginnings, from ancient philosophers to Victorian reformers.
The library has 818 quotes on this topic. Here are 60 of the most quoted, no more than four from any one writer.
60 quotes about change
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The fashion wears out more apparel than the man.
William Shakespeare Much Ado About Nothing, Act iii. Sc. 3 -
Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night: God said, “Let Newton be!” and all was light.
Alexander Pope Epitaph intended for Sir Isaac Newton -
Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever,—One foot in sea and one on shore, To one thing constant never.
William Shakespeare Much Ado About Nothing, Act ii. Sc. 3 -
Yet the first bringer of unwelcome news Hath but a losing office, and his tongue Sounds ever after as a sullen bell, Remember’d tolling a departing friend.
William Shakespeare Henry IV, Part 2, Part II. Act i. Sc. 1 -
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds On half the nations, and with fear of change perplexes monarchs.
John Milton Paradise Lost, Book i. Line 597 -
Young men are fitter to invent than to judge, fitter for execution than for counsel, and fitter for new projects than for settled business.
Francis Bacon Of Youth and Age -
Wherever the bright sun of heaven shall shine, His honour and the greatness of his name Shall be, and make new nations.
William Shakespeare Henry VIII, Act v. Sc. 5 -
Variety’s the very spice of life. That gives it all its flavor.
William Cowper The Timepiece: The Task, Bk. II -
He only is advancing in life whose heart is getting softer, whose blood warmer, whose brain quicker, and whose spirit is entering into living peace.
John Ruskin Sesame and Lilies -
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Frederick Douglass West India Emancipation speech, Canandaigua NY, 3 August 1857 -
Long is the way And hard, that out of hell leads up to light.
John Milton Paradise Lost, Bk. II -
It is not from nature, but from education and habits, that our wants are chiefly derived.
Henry Fielding -
The young disease, that must subdue at length, Grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength.
Alexander Pope Essay on Man. Epistle ii, Line 135 -
For evil news rides post, while good news baits.
John Milton Samson Agonistes, Line 1538 -
In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold, Alike fantastic if too new or old: Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
Alexander Pope Essay on Criticism, Part ii. Line 133 -
Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change.
Alfred Tennyson Locksley Hall, Line 182 -
Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be.
Robert Browning Rabbi Ben Ezra, Dramatis Personæ -
The earth was made so various, that the mind Of desultory man, studious of change And pleased with novelty, might be indulged.
William Cowper The Task, Book i. The Sofa. Line 506 -
How various his employments whom the world Calls idle, and who justly in return Esteems that busy world an idler too!
William Cowper The Task, Book iii. The Garden. Line 352 -
All that is human must retrograde if it do not advance.
Edward Gibbon Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776), Chap. lxxi -
People seldom improve when they have no other model but themselves to copy after.
Oliver Goldsmith -
The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
I shall try to correct errors, when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views, so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
Abraham Lincoln April 20 -
Women give to men the very gold of their lives. Possibly; but they invariably want it back in such very small change.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
Costume is a growth, an evolution, and a most important, perhaps the most important, sign of the manners, customs, and mode of life of each century.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
To have faults and not to reform them,—this, indeed, should be pronounced having faults.
Confucius Analects, XV.29 · translated by James Legge -
The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature and not on its growth and development.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
If a man keeps cherishing his old knowledge, so as continually to be acquiring new, he may be a teacher of others.
Confucius Analects, II.11 · translated by James Legge -
When we find facts within our knowledge exhibited by some new method, or even, it may be, described in a foreign language, they receive a peculiar charm of novelty and wear a fresh air.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Maxims and Reflections, Science, No. 526 · translated by T. Bailey Saunders -
The progress of the superior man is upwards; the progress of the mean man is downwards.
Confucius Analects, XIV.24 · translated by James Legge -
Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments.
Plato -
Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed down-stairs a step at a time.
Mark Twain Pudd’nhead Wilson -
Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.
Napoleon -
A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people.
Abraham Lincoln April 13 -
With the growth of knowledge our ideas must from time to time be organised afresh. The change takes place usually in accordance with new maxims as they arise, but it always remains provisional.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Maxims and Reflections, Science, No. 525 · translated by T. Bailey Saunders -
From lower to the higher next, Not to the top, is Nature’s text; And embryo Good, to reach full stature, Absorbs the Evil in its nature.
James Russell Lowell Festina Lente. Moral -
Our political revolution of 1776 was the germ that has vegetated, and still is to grow into the universal liberty of mankind.
Abraham Lincoln November 29 -
Ill habits gather by unseen degrees,—As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas.
John Dryden Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book xv. The Worship of Aesculapius, Line 155 Disputed attribution -
Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widen’d with the process of the suns.
Alfred Tennyson Locksley Hall, Line 137 -
There are only the wise of the highest class, and the stupid of the lowest class, who cannot be changed.
Confucius Analects, XVII.3 · translated by James Legge -
In his efforts to escape from ugliness and unhappiness the rich man intensifies both. Every new yard of West End creates a new acre of East End.
George Bernard Shaw Maxims for Revolutionists -
All that is made perfect by progress perishes also by progress.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 88 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
Let no one say that I have said nothing new; the arrangement of the subject is new. When we play tennis, we both play with the same ball, but one of us places it better.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 22 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
Custom without this would pass for tyranny; but the sovereignty of reason and justice is no more tyrannical than that of desire. They are principles natural to man.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 325 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
No liberal man would impute a charge of unsteadiness to another for having changed his opinion.
Cicero -
We have another source of error in diseases. They spoil the judgment and the senses; and if the more serious produce a sensible change, I do not doubt that slighter ills produce a proportionate impression.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 82 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
Progress, man’s distinctive mark alone, Not God’s, and not the beasts: God is, they are; Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be.
Robert Browning A Death in the Desert -
Each year one vicious habit rooted out, in time might make the worst man good.
Benjamin Franklin -
Fool, not to know that love endures no tie, And Jove but laughs at lovers’ perjury.
John Dryden Palamon and Arcite, Book ii. Line 758 -
The first reformer in any movement has to meet with such a hard opposition, and gets so battered and bespattered, that afterward, when people find they have to accept his reform, they will accept it more easily from another man.
Abraham Lincoln August 16 -
There is nothing in the world more soft and weak than water, and yet for attacking things that are firm and strong there is nothing that can take precedence of it; for there is nothing so effectual for which it can be changed.
Laozi Tao Te Ching, ch. 78.1 · translated by James Legge -
We know all about the habits of the ant, we know all about the habits of the bee, but we know nothing at all about the habits of the oyster. It seems almost certain that we have been choosing the wrong time for studying the oyster.
Mark Twain Pudd’nhead Wilson -
The perfect servant, when his master makes humane advances to him, feels that his existence is threatened, and hastens to change his place.
George Bernard Shaw Maxims for Revolutionists -
Decadence can find agents only when it wears the mask of progress.
George Bernard Shaw Maxims for Revolutionists -
Whatever is new is unlooked for, and ever it mends some and impairs others; and he that is holpen takes it for a fortune, and he that is hurt for a wrong.
Francis Bacon Essays -
If it stays here, it also changes here, and is dissolved into its proper parts, which are elements of the universe and of thyself. And these too change, and they murmur not.
Marcus Aurelius Meditations, Book VIII.18 · translated by George Long -
Life must be lived on a higher plane. We must go up to a higher platform, to which we are always invited to ascend; there the whole aspect of things changes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essays: Second Series -
The multitude have no habit of self-reliance or original action.
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Conduct of Life -
In this great society wide lying around us, a critical analysis would find very few spontaneous actions. It is almost all custom and gross sense.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essays: Second Series -
Novels are the journal or record of manners; and the new importance of these books derives from the fact that the novelist begins to penetrate the surface, and treat this part of life more worthily.
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Conduct of Life