Quotes to inspire and reflect

Unhappiness does make people look stupid.

This is what I think now: that the natural state of the sentient adult is a qualified unhappiness.

Where there are two, one cannot be wretched, and one not.

All artists today are expected to cultivate a little fashionable unhappiness.

The Morning after Woe— / ’Tis frequently the Way— / Surpasses all that rose before— / For utter Jubilee—.

Naught so sweet as melancholy.

A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants, and how much more unhappy he might be than he really is.

Anyone who has ever experienced dehumanized life on welfare or any other confidence-shaking dependency knows that a paid job may be preferable to the dole, even when the handout is coming from a family member.

It were depression, too. They cut my wages down once at the foundry. They cut my wages down again. Then they cut my wages out, also the job.

A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that fortune's inequality exhibits under this sun.

It is profound philosophy to sound the depths of feeling and distinguish traits of character. Men must be studied as deeply as books.

The best that can be said for anybody is probably that you misunderstood him favorably.

God grant me to contend with those that understand me.

Each of us really understands in others only those feelings he is capable of producing himself.

Insight—the titillating knack for hurting!

Grieve not that men do not know you; grieve that you do not know men.

If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.

All the glory of greatness has no lustre for people who are in search of understanding.

Nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known.

It is less dishonour to hear imperfectly than to speak imperfectly. The ears are excused: the understanding is not.

Understanding is the beginning of approving.

In what we really understand, we reason but little.

You never know where you’re going to find the same thoughts in another brain, but when it happens you know it right off, just like you were connected by a small electrical wire that suddenly glows red hot and sparks.

Things and men have always a certain sense, a certain side by which they must be got hold of if one wants to obtain a solid grasp and a perfect command.

Light; or, failing that, lightning: the world can take its choice.

How should men know what is coming to pass within them, when there are no words to grasp it? How could the drops of water know themselves to be a river? Yet the river flows on.

It is our less conscious thoughts and our less conscious actions which mainly mould our lives and the lives of those who spring from us.

We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end.

Doubt and mistrust are the mere panic of timid imagination, which the steadfast heart will conquer, and the large mind transcend.

Oft from new truths, and new phrase, new doubts grow, / As strange attire aliens the men we know.

When faith burns itself out, ’tis God who dies and thenceforth proves unavailing.

Atheism. There is not a single exalting and emancipating influence that does not in turn become inhibitory.

The unbelief of the age is attested by the loud condemnation of trifles.

If there are none [gods], / All our toil is without meaning.

The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own.

To lose one’s faith—surpass / The loss of an Estate— / Because Estates can be / Replenished— faith cannot—.

Atheism is rather in the lip than in the heart of man.

All we have gained then by our unbelief / Isa life of doubt diversified by faith, / For one of faith diversified by doubt: / We called the chess-board white,— we cail it black.

I don’t mind plain women being Puritans. It is the only excuse they have for being plain.

The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.

To succeed in chaining the multitude you must seem to wear the same fetters.

When the eye fails to find beauty—alias solace-—it commands the body to create it, or, failing that, adjusts itself to perceive virtue in ugliness.

The tyrant claims freedom to lull freedom / and yet to keep it for himself.

Beware the People weeping / When they bare the iron hand.

Tyrants are but the spawn of Ignorance, / Begotten by the slaves they trample on.

When the white man governs himself, that is self- government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government—that is despotism.

When a nation has allowed itself to fall under a tyrannical regime, it cannot be absolved from the faults due to the guilt of that regime.

The dictator, in all his pride, is held in the grip of his party machine. He can go forward; he cannot go back. He must blood his hounds and show them sport, or else, like Actaeon of old, be devoured by them. All-strong without, he is all-weak within.