W

[a b c d e f g  h i j k l m n  o p q r s t u  v w x y z]

[a]▲

Walls have ears.

Want is the mother of industry.

Want makes wit.

Want of wit is worse than want of wealth.

Waste not, want not.

A watched pot is long in boiling.

A watched pot [pan] never boils.

The way to be safe is never to be secure.

The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.  --G(ilbert) K(eith) Chesterton (1874-1936)

[e]▲

We all have a face that we hide away forever.  --Billy Joel (1949-): The Stranger

We all have ability. The difference is how we use it.  --Stevie Wonder (1950-)

We are born weak, we need strength; helpless, we need aid; foolish, we need reason. All that we lack at birth, all that we need when we come to man's estate, is the gift of education.  --Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78)  

We are never so happy or so unhappy as we imagine.  --François de La Rochefoucauld (1613-80)

We are not limited by our old age; we are liberated by it.  --Stu Mittleman

We are participants, whether we would or not, in the life of the world. The interests of all nations are our own also.  --(Thomas) Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924)

We are still a sexophobic society, afraid of the wrong things for the wrong reasons.  --Mary Steichen Calderone (1904-98)

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.  --Plato(n) (427-347B.C.)  

We can often do more for other men by correcting our own faults than by correcting theirs.  --François de Salignac de La Mothe Fénelon (1651-1715)

We can talk about democracy when people's stomachs are full, not empty.  --Ranariddh

We cannot control the tragic things that happen to us, but we can control the way we face up to them.

We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.  --John Dryden (1631-1700)

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves to be like other people.  --Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

We invent what we love, and what we fear.  --John Winslow Irving (1942-)

We know too much, and are convinced of too little. Our literature is a substitute for religion, and so is our religion.  --T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot (1888-1965)

We know too much and feel too little. At least we feel too little of those creative emotions from which a good life springs.  --Bertrand (Arthur William) Russel (1872-1970)

We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.  --George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves: otherwise, we harden.  --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

We must change in order to survive.  --Pearl Mae Bailey (1918-90)

We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought by the millitary-industrial complex. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.  --Oliver Stone (1946-): Platoon

We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.  --Samuel Smiles (1812-1904): Self-Help  ch.11

We shall lie all alike in our graves.

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances--to choose one's own way.  --Viktor Emil Frankl (1905-97)

We will either find a way, or make one.  --Hannibal (247-183B.C.)

We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible.  --C. Malesherbez

Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it.  --Benjamin Franklin (1706-90)

Wealth of words is not eloquence.

The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.  --William Shakespeare (1564-1616): All's Well That Ends Well

Weeds come forth on the fattest soil if it is untilled.

Well begun is half done.

We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

[h]▲

What cannot be cured must be endured.

What exactly is success? For me it is to be found not in applause, but in the satisfaction of feeling that one is realizing one's ideal.  --Anna (Pavlovna) Pavlova (1881-1931)

What goes around comes around.

What have you that you have not received? But if you received it, why do you boast as if it were not received?  --Bible: 1st Corinthians  Chapter 4

What I wish to show when I paint is the way I see things with my eyes and in my heart.  --Raoul Dufy (1877-1953)

What is done can't be undone.  --William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Macbeth

What is form that is emptiness, what is emptiness that is form.  --Prajñâ-Pâramitâ-Hridaya-Sûtra

"What is mind?" "No matter." "What is matter?" "Never mind."  --Thomas Hewitt Key (1799-1875)

What is soul? It's like electricity--we don't really know what it is, but it's a force that can light a room.  --Ray Charles (Robinson) (1930-)

What the eye does not see the heart does not grieve over.

What the fool does in the end the wise man does in the beginning.

What the heart thinks, the mouth speaks.

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?  --Vincent (Willem) van Gogh (1853-90)

What you are is God's gift to you; what you make of it is your gift to God.  --Anthony Dalla Villa

What you don't know won't hurt you.

What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.  --Bible: 1st Corinthians  Chapter 15

Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well.  --Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield (1694-1773): Letter to His Son

Whatever limits us we call fate.  --Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82)

Whatever side I take, I know well that I will be blamed.  --Louis XIV (the Great) [the Sun King] (1638-1715)

Whatever's begun in anger ends in shame.

What's the good of a sundial in the shade?

The wheel is come full circle. / The wheel has come [turned] full circle.  --William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Lear

When a cowherd composes poems, new poetry will flourish.  --Ito Sachio (1864-1913)

When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute--and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity.  --Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

When a man's knowledge is not in order, the more of it he has the greater will be his confusion.  --Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)

When ale is in, wit is out.

When any creativity becomes useful, it is sucked into the vortex of commercialism, and when a thing becomes commercial, it becomes the enemy of man.  --Arthur Miller (1915-)

When everyone is in the wrong, everyone is in the right.  --Pierre-Claude Nivelle de La Chaussée (1692-1754)

When I am dead and buried, on my tombstone I would like to have it written, "I have arrived." Because when you feel that you have arrived, you are dead.  --Yul Brynner (1920-85)

When I am lonely, strangers don't know;; when I am lonely, my friends laugh; when I am lonely, my mother is kind; when I am lonely, Buddha is lonely.  --Kaneko Misuzu (1903-30): When I am Lonely

When I am weak, then I am strong.  --Bible: 2nd Corinthians  Chapter 12

When I was a boy, everything was right.  --John Lennon (1940-80) "The Beatles": She Said She Said

When I was young I thought money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.  --Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.  --Charles Austin Beard (1874-1948): Four Lessons of History  in "Readers' Digest" Feb 1941

When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.  --John Ruskin (1819-1900)

When nothing is sure, everything is possible.  --Margaret Drabble (1939-)

When one door closes another door opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.  --Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922)  

When one end of the balloon is squeezed, the other bulges.  --"THE TRIALS OF LIVING IN PEACE" from TIME, November 27, 1995

When one's expectations are reduced to zero, one really appreciates everything one does have.  --Stephen William Hawking (1942-2018)  

When poverty comes in at the door, love flies out at the window.

When the age is in, the wit is out.  --William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Much Ado about Nothing

When the cat is away, the mice will play.

When the going gets tough, the tough gets going.

When the wolf comes in at the door, love creeps out of the window.

When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.  --Bible: Genesis  Chapter 5

When the word is out, it belongs to another.

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.  --Mark Twain (1835-1910)

When words leave off, music begins.  --Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)

When work is a pleasure, life is a joy! When work is a duty, life is slavery.  --Maxim Gorki [Gorky] (1868-1936)

When written in Chinese, the word "crisis" is composed of two characters: one represents danger and the other represents opportunity.  --John F(itzgerald) Kennedy (1917-63)

When you reach for the stars, you may not quite get one, but you won't come up with handful of mud either.  --Leo Burnett

When you sit by yourself, you'll realize you can't shaft without someone else.  --"New Order": Subculture

When you take stuff from one writer, it's plagiarism; but when you take it from many writers, it's research.  --Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)

Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.  --Peter (Ferdinand) Drucker (1909-)

Where there is a will, there is a way.  

Where there is smoke, there is fire.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereon one must remain silent.  --Ludwig (Josef Johann) Wittgenstein (1889-1951)

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

While there is life, there is hope.

Who begins many (things) finishes but few.

Who bewails himself has the cure in his hands.

Who can read the future?

Who hunts two hares together catches neither.

Who is to [will] bell the cat?  --Aesop (c.620-c.560B.C.): Aesop's Fables  "Belling the Cat"

Who likes not his business, his business likes not him.

Who spits against the wind, spits in his own face.

Who travels for love finds a thousand miles not longer than one.  --Japanese Proverb (contributed by Mikiyo Watanabe)

[i]▲

Wine in the bottle does not quench thirst.

Winter must be cold for those with no warm memories.  --Leo McCarey (1898-1969): An Affair to Remember  (In the film, Terry McKay, portrayed by Deborah Kerr, says to Nickie Ferrante by Cary Grant.)

Wisdom doesn't always speak in Greek and Latin.

Wise after the event.

The wise learn many things from their enemies.  --Aristophanes (448?-385?B.C.)

A wise man changes his mind; a fool never.

A wise man, recognizing that the world is but an illusion, does not act as if it is real, so he escapes the suffering.  --Gautama Siddhartha (566?-480B.C.)

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.  --Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Wise men have their mouths in their hearts, fools their hearts in their mouths.

Wise men learn by other men's mistakes; fools by their own.

The wish is father to the thought.

Wit is the unexpected explosion of thought.  --Edwin Percy Whipple (1819-86)

With age, you must follow your children.

With the good we become good.

Without wisdom, wealth is worthless.

Without wonder and insight, acting is just a trade. With it, it becomes creation.  --Bette [Ruth Elizabeth] Davis (1908-89)

[o]▲

The wolf knows what the ill beast thinks.

Woman is as fickle as April weather.

A woman's mind and winter wind change often.

A wonder [Wonders] lasts but [only] nine days.

A word is enough to the wise.

The words dripped on my consciousness, sank into my being, and carried me away to the magic long ago of once upon a time.  --Peter Abrahams (1919-)

Words hurt more than swords.

Words without actions are the assassins of idealism.  --Herbert (Clark) Hoover (1874-1964)

The work comes into the world at an undetermined hour, from a still unknown, but it comes inevitably.  --Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924)

The world belongs to the enthusiast who keeps cool.  --William McFee (1881-1966)

The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning.  --Ivy Baker Priest (1905-75)

A world of facts lies outside and beyond the world of words.  --Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-95)

The worst enemy of human hope is not brute facts, but men of brains who will not face them.  --Max Forrester Eastman (1883-1969)

The worst is not so long as we can say, ‘This is the worst.’  --William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Lear

The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful, and has nobody to thank.  --Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-82)

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat. "I don't much care where--" said Alice. "Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat. "--so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation. "Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."  --Lewis Carroll (1832-98): Alice's Adventures in Wonderland  ch.6 (Pig and Pepper)

[r]▲

Write down the advice of him who loves you, though you like it not at present.

Write what you like; there is no other rule.  --O. Henry (1862-1910)

Writing good editorials is chiefly telling people what they think, not what you think.  --Arthur Brisbane (1864-1936)