Quotes to inspire and reflect

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

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

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

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

God grant me to contend with those that understand me.

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

Insight—the titillating knack for hurting!

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.

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.

Understanding is the beginning of approving.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

[l]t is in fact far easier to act under conditions of tyranny than it is to think.

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.

This is a sickness rooted and inherent / in the nature of a tyranny: / that he that holds it does not trust his friends.

Artists have no less talents than ever; their taste, their vision, their sentiment are often interesting; they are mighty in their independence and feeble only in their works.

In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning.

The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun.

Modern man—whether in the womb of the masses, or with his workmates, or with his family, or alone—can never for one moment forget that he is living in a world in which he is a means and whose end is not his business.

Whoever has not felt the danger of our times palpitating under his hand, has not really penetrated to the vitals of destiny, he has merely pricked its surface.

Often, the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.

[The Jazz Age] was borrowed time anyhow—the whole upper tenth of a nation living with the insouciance of grand dues and the casualness of chorus girls.