Quotes to inspire and reflect

Half the agony of living is waiting.

People seem to think there is something inherently noble and virtuous in the desire to go for a walk.

The philosophy of waiting is sustained by all the oracles of the universe.

The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.

An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood: a mud bath for every soul concerned in it.

Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.

Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets.

Voting is simply a way of determining which side is the stronger without putting it to the test of fighting.

Those who stay away from the election think that one vote will do no good: Tis but one step more to think one vote will do no harm.

There are more Negroes in jail with me than there are on the voting rolls.

When men are rightly occupied, their amusement grows out of their work, as the colour-petals out of a fruitful flower.

At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper—no amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of the point.

The artisan or scientist or the follower of whatever discipline who has the habit of comparing himself not with other followers but with the discipline itself will have a lower opinion of himself, the more excellent he is.

The player envies only the player, the poet envies only the poet.

Nature drives with a loose rein and vitality of any sort can blunder through many a predicament in which reason would despair.

Every man has his own vocation. The talent is the call.

The difference between the university graduate and the autodidact lies not so much in the extent of knowledge as in the extent of vitality and self-confidence.

Human vitality is so exuberant that in the sorriest desert it still finds a pretext for glowing and trembling.

A great mind is one that can forget or look beyond itself.

No man sees far; the most see no farther than their noses.

If a man has no vices, he's in great danger of making vices about his virtues, and there’s a spectacle.

I never was so rapid in my virtue but my vice kept up with me.

When I religiously confess myself to myself, I find that the best virtue I have has in it some tincture of vice.

If virtue cannot shine bright, but by the conflict of contrary appetites, shall we then say that she cannot subsist without the assistance of vice, and that it is from her that she derives her reputation and honor?

There is a capacity of virtue in us, arid there is a capacity of vice to make your blood creep.

Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.

I have seen men incapable of the sciences, but never any incapable of virtue.

Virtue between men is a commerce of good actions: he who has no part in this commerce must not be reckoned.

Nothing can be more puritanical in application than the virtues.

When men grow virtuous in their old age, they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil’s leavings.

Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful.

The glory that goes with wealth and beauty is fleeting and fragile; virtue is a possession glorious and eternal.

We know that the exercise of virtue should be its own reward, and it seems to follow that the enduring of it on the part of the patient should be its own punishment.

The strength of a man’s virtue must not be measured by his efforts, but by his ordinary life.

Virtue cannot be followed but for herself, and if one sometimes borrows her mask to some other purpose, she presently pulls it away again.

It is a distinction to have many virtues, but a hard lot.

Every man prefers virtue, when there is not some strong incitement to transgress its precepts.

Even virtue followed beyond reason’s rule / May stamp the just man knave, the sage a fool.

That virtue which requires to be ever guarded is scarce worth the sentinel.

The measure of any man’s virtue is what he would do, if he had neither the laws nor public opinion, nor even his own prejudices, to control him.

Virtue is despised if it be seen in a threadbare cloak.

He hath no mean portion of virtue that loveth it in another.

The highest virtue is always against the law.

The order of things consents to virtue.

The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough.

Who knows his virtue’s name or place, hath none.

Seldom indeed does human virtue rise / From trunk to branch.

If a superior man abandon virtue, how can he fulfil the requirements of that name?