READ THE SOURCE
The books behind the quotes.
Every quote comes from somewhere. These are books by the authors people quote most on this site. Links go to Amazon and are affiliate links; we earn a commission if you buy.
Marcus Aurelius
Meditations
A private notebook, and the source of many Stoic quotes. Choose a modern translation.
Seneca
Letters from a Stoic
Letters to a friend on money, grief and time.
Epictetus
The Enchiridion
The short handbook, quick to read.
Henry David Thoreau
Walden
On living deliberately.
Kahlil Gibran
The Prophet
Short prose poems, and one of the most quoted books of the last century.
Maya Angelou
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
The first volume of her autobiography.
George Orwell
Nineteen Eighty-Four
The source of many political quotes.
Animal Farm
A short political fable.
Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray
His only novel, full of quotable lines.
Mark Twain
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
One of his best-known novels.
Rumi
The Essential Rumi
A popular selection of his poems in English.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Where many of his best-known lines come from.
Lao Tzu
Tao Te Ching
A short classic, many translations exist.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Essays: First Series
Includes Self-Reliance.
Aristotle
Nicomachean Ethics
His main work on how to live well.
Plato
The Republic
His best-known dialogue.
Confucius
The Analects
Sayings collected by his followers.
Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice
Her best-known novel.
Virginia Woolf
A Room of One's Own
An essay on women and writing.
Ernest Hemingway
The Old Man and the Sea
A short novel, quick to read.
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.