The following quotations are given as examples of sentences that survive. Some are exceptionally well designed, some make remarkable statements, and some are just plain fun.

Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle; Old Age a regret.

— Benjamin Disraeli

There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing.

— Isaac Disraeli

The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such who are in the institution wish to get out; and such as are out wish to get in.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

A Fool and his words are soon parted; a man of genius and his money.

— William Shenstone

All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

— Leo Tolstoy, Translated by Aylmer Maude

A verb has a hard enough time of it in this world when it is all together. It's downright inhuman to split it up. But that's what those Germans do. They take part of a verb and put it down here, like a stake, and they take the other part of it and put it a way over yonder like another stake, and between these two limits they just shovel in German.

— Mark Twain

There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.

— George Eliot

A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to need, and the rest he can put away in the lumber room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.

— Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

When a lot of remedies are suggested for a disease, that means it cannot be cured.

— Anton Chekhov

That man's silence is wonderful to listen to.

— Thomas Hardy

I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is prose; words in their best order;—poetry; the best words in the best order.

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

See Exploring Literature