Quotes
Quotes, checked against the original text
23 quotes so far. Each one is checked word for word against a public-domain text, links to that text, and comes with what it means in plain words. Where the famous version is a paraphrase, the page says so.
The 12 lines people get wrong →
Overwhelmed
- Thoreau on too many things: the actual passage from WaldenHenry David Thoreau, Walden (1854), “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For”
Restless
- What Pascal actually wrote about sitting quietly in a roomBlaise Pascal, Pensées, §II, no. 139
- Did Emerson really say “Go where there is no path and leave a trail”?Muriel Strode, “Wind-Wafted Wild Flowers”, The Open Court, August 1903
- What Montaigne actually wrote about belonging to yourselfMichel de Montaigne, Essays, Book I, ch. 38, “Of Solitude”
- Seneca on why travel doesn’t cure restlessness: “a change of soul”Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, no. 28, §1–2
Anxious about what’s next
- Seneca on imagined fears: the full passage from Letter 13Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, no. 13, §4
- Did Marcus Aurelius really say “You have power over your mind”?Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book VIII, §47
- Did Lao Tzu really say “If you are depressed, you are living in the past”?Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, ch. 15
Lonely
- Emily Dickinson’s “I’m nobody! Who are you?”, and what it meansEmily Dickinson, “I’m nobody! Who are you?”, Poems, Second Series (1891)
- Did Rumi really say “What you seek is seeking you”?Rumi, Masnavi, Book I, line 1741
- Did Aristotle really say “Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god”?Francis Bacon, Essays, “Of Friendship” (1625 edition)
Doubting myself
- “Our doubts are traitors”: who says it in Measure for Measure, and whyWilliam Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act 1, Scene 4
- Did Emerson really say “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else”?Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance”, Essays: First Series (1841)
- Did Aristotle really say “We are what we repeatedly do”?Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, ch. 1
Tired
- Christina Rossetti’s “Up-Hill”: does the road wind up-hill all the way?Christina Rossetti, “Up-Hill”, Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862)
- Where Oscar Wilde wrote “To live is the rarest thing in the world”Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism (1891)
Angry
- Marcus Aurelius on revenge: “not to become like unto them”Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book VI, §5
- Did the Buddha really say anger is like “grasping a hot coal”?The Buddha, Dhammapada, verses 3 and 5
Taken for granted
- Machiavelli: is it really “better to be feared than loved”?Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, ch. 17
Quietly fine
- Tagore’s “I have had my invitation to this world’s festival”Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali, no. 16
Hopeful
- Emily Dickinson’s “Hope is the thing with feathers”, and what it meansEmily Dickinson, “Hope”, Poems, Second Series (1891)
Happy
- Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The world is so full of a number of things”Robert Louis Stevenson, “Happy Thought”, A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885), no. XXIV
Full of wonder
- Wordsworth’s “My heart leaps up when I behold”: the rainbow poemWilliam Wordsworth, “My heart leaps up when I behold”, Poems, in Two Volumes (1807), vol. 2