I know one thing we did right Was the day we started to fight, Keep your eye on the prize, Hold on, hold on!

-Anonymous
Civil rights song, quoted in  Juan Williams Eye on the Prize (1987).

Oh, what a dear ravishing thing is the beginning of an Amour!

-Behan, Brendan Francis
  The Emperor of the Moon, act1, sc.1.

For I am the L your God: ye shall therefore sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy; for I am holy: neither shall ye defile yourselves with any manner of creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

-Bible (Old Testament)
ORDLeviticus11:44.

Behold,Iwilldoathing inIsrael, at whichboththeears of every one that heareth it shall tingle.

-Bible (Old Testament)
Samuel 3:11.

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

-Bible (Old Testament)
Ecclesiastes1:9.

A fond thing vainly invented.

-Book of Common Prayer
Articles of Religion, XXII  Of Purgatory.

She was maintaining the prime truth of woman, the universal mother†that if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.

-Chesterton, G(ilbert) K(eith)
  What's Wrong with the World, pt.4,'Folly and Female Education'.

It isa far, far better thing that Ido, thanIhave everdone; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.

-Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam
  Sydney Carton.  A  Tale of  Two Cities, bk.3, ch.15.

Bubber was the first man I heard use the expression,'it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.' Everything, and I repeat, everything had to swing.

-Ellington, Duke (Edward Kennedy)
  Of trumpeter Bubber Miley.'The Most Essential Instrument', in Jazz Journal, Dec.

People always ask me the most ridiculous questions. They want to know,'Howdo you approach a role?' Well, Idon't know.Iapproach it by first saying yes, thengetting on with the bloody thing.

-Evans, Dame Edith
Attributed.

The question that he frames in all but words Is what to make of a diminished thing.

-Frost, Robert Lee
  'The Oven Bird'.

   What brought the kindred spider to that height, Then steered the white moth thither in the night? What but design of darkness to appall?ö If design govern in a thing so small.

-Frost, Robert Lee
  'Design'.

A local thing called Christianity.

-Hardy,Thomas
  The Dynasts, pt.1, act1, sc.6.

   Life is just one damned thing after another.

-Hubbard, Elbert Green
  In The Philistine, Dec.

A poor, weak, palsy-stricken, churchyard thing.

-Keats,John
  Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St.  Agnes and Other Poems,'The Eve of St.  Agnes', stanza18.

I know that a sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature†but the prettier the kind of a thing is, the more desirable it is that it should be pretty of its kind.

-Lamb, Charles
  Essays of Elia,'A Bachelor's Complaint of the Behaviour of Married People'.

The thing depicted is less stationary, even the object in itself is less discernible than it used to be. A landscape broken into and traversed in a car or an express train losesindescriptivevaluebut gainsinsynthetic value; the window of the railroad carriage or the windshield of the car, combined withthespeed at whichyou aretraveling, have changed the familiar look of things. Modern man registers one hundred times more impressions than did an eighteenth century artist.

-Le¤  ger, Fernand
Quoted in D Cooper The Cubist Epoch (1970).

Although we sought to do the right thingöand believed we were doing the right thingöin my judgement, hindsight proves us wrong.

-McNamara, Robert Strange
  In Retrospect:  The tragedy and lessons of Vietnam (with Brian Van de Mark).

La moindre chose contient un peu d'inconnu. Trouvons-le. The least thing contains something mysterious. Find it.

-Maupassant, Guy de
  Pierre et  Jean, pre¤  face.

Let the thing fall down in peace.

-Maybeck, Bernard Ralph
On the crumbling remains of his Corinthian classic Palace of Fine  Arts, designed for San Francisco's1915 Panama^Pacific Exposition. Recalled in the NewYork Times, 9 May1965.