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Christmas Quotes

Most of the quotes on this page are not about Christmas at all. We built it from the pages on family, love and gratitude, which is what people tend to want for a card or a toast.

That makes it a long list, ordered by quality rather than by how seasonal each entry feels. If you want something that sounds like Christmas, search for it. If you want something that would be true at any family table, start here.

Random quote on Christmas

Most quoted on christmas:

The death then of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world, and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover.

Edgar Allan Poe The Philosophy of Composition (1846)

Love reduces the complexity of living.

Anaïs Nin Diary entries (1914)

The acquisition of any knowledge is always of use to the intellect, because it may thus drive out useless things and retain the good. For nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known.

Leonardo da Vinci The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883)

There is no gift more great than love.

James Branch Cabell The Silver Stallion (1926)

Some day, the world will discover that, without thought, there can be no love.

Ayn Rand Apollo and Dionysus (1969)

My heart, the bird of the wilderness, has found its sky in your eyes.

Rabindranath Tagore The Gardener (1915)

Professional standards, the standards of ambition and selfishness, are always sliding downward toward expense, ostentation, and mediocrity. They tend always to narrow the ground of judgment.

Wendell Berry What Are People For? (1990)

I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love.

Wendell Berry Another Turn of the Crank (1996)

Happiest is he who expects no happiness from others. Love delights and glorifies in giving, not receiving. So learn to love and give, and not to expect anything from others.

Meher Baba Lord Meher (1986)

Love comes unseen,—we only see it go.

Henry Austin Dobson Vignettes in Rhyme and Vers de Societé (1873)

Is the world so unbearable? No! What we need is only a little more love for the world.

Sri Chinmoy Seventy Seven Thousand Service-Trees series 1-50 (1998)

The family consists of those who live under the same roof with the pater familias; those who form (if I may use the expression) his fire-side.

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon R. v. Inhabitants of Darlington (1792)

Wedded love is founded on esteem.

Elijah Fenton Mariamne: A Tragedy (1723)

Love is the last of the virtues to be born in the heart, but it is the first in value.

Marcus Eremita

Don’t mistake gratitude for love.

Esther Friesner Harlot's Ruse (1986)

When we do not love, we sleep, we are children of the dust — but love, and you are a god, you are pure, as on the first day of creation.

Leo Tolstoy

Venus, thy eternal sway
All the race of men obey.

Euripides

When I'm not thank'd at all, I'm thank'd enough,
I've done my duty, and I've done no more.

Henry Fielding The Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great (1730)

She knew she was by him beloved,—she knew
For quickly comes such knowledge, that his heart
Was darken'd with her shadow.

Lord Byron The Dream (1816)

Women know no perfect love:
Loving the strong, they can forsake the strong;
Man clings because the being whom he loves
Is weak and needs him.

George Eliot The Spanish Gypsy (1868)

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