Quotes to inspire and reflect

A man who raises himself by degrees to wealth and power, contracts, in the course of this protracted labor, habits of prudence and restraint which he cannot afterwards shake off. A man cannot gradually enlarge his mind as he does his house.

According to success do we gain a reputation for judgment.

He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.

There be many wise men that have secret hearts and transparent countenances.

1 might say that what amateurs call a style is usually only the unavoidable awkwardness in first trying to make something that has not heretofore been made.

The most important things must be said simply, for they are spoiled by bombast; whereas trivial things must be described grandly, for they are supported only by aptness of expression, tone and manner.

Epithets, like pepper, / Give zest to what you write; / And if you strew them sparely, / They whet the appetite: / But if you lay them on too thick, / You spoil the matter quite!

Manner is all in all, whate’er is writ, / The substitute for genius, sense, and wit.

If poverty is the mother of all crimes, lack of intelligence is their father.

Persons of slender intellectual stamina dread competition, as dwarfs are afraid of being run over in the street.

He that makes himself an ass must not take it ill if men ride him.

An ass may bray a good while before he shakes the stars down.

Idiot, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.

With stupidity and sound digestion man may front much.

The strongest iron, hardened in the fire, / most often ends in scraps and shatterings.

So long as some are strong and some are weak, the weak will be driven to the wall.

Strength and strength's will are the supreme ethic. All else are dreams from hospital beds, the sly, crawling goodness of sneaking souls.

Strong men can always afford to be gentle. Only the weak are intent on “giving as good as they get.”

Like strength is felt from hope, and from despair.

A weak man is just by accident. A strong but nonviolent man is unjust by accident.

It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak.

When is man strong until he feels alone?

The strength of even the strongest individual can always be overpowered by the many, who often will combine for no other purpose than to ruin strength precisely because of its peculiar independence.

Nobody can honestly think of himself as a strong character because, however successful he may be in overcoming them, he is necessarily aware of the doubts and temptations that accompany every important choice.

The high strength of men / knows no content with limitation.

A story has been thought to its conclusion when it has taken its worst possible turn.

Why, courage then! What cannot be avoided / Twere childish weakness to lament or fear.

Whoever has nothing to hope, let him despair of nothing.

Be content with what you are, and wish not change; nor dread your last day, nor long for it.

Let a man accept his destiny, / No pity and no tears.

We often excuse our own want of philanthropy by giving the name of fanaticism to the more ardent zeal of others.

Meanness is more in half-doing than in omitting acts of generosity.

Every society has a tendency to reduce its opponents to caricatures.

There’s nothing the world loves more than a readymade description which they can hang on to a man, and so save themselves all trouble in future.

A thief passes for a gentleman when stealing has made him rich.

The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier.

All stealing is comparative. If you come to absolutes, pray who does not steal?

The prestige you acquire by being able to tell your friends that you know famous men proves only that you are yourself of small account.

In statesmanship get formalities right, never mind about the moralities.

Statesmen are not only liable to give an account of whatThey say or do in public, but there is a busy inquiry? made into their very meals, beds, marriages, and every other sportive or serious action.

There are some whom the applause of the multitude has deluded into the belief that they are really statesmen.

The minds of some of our statesmen, like the pupil of the human eye, contract themselves the more, the stronger light there is shed upon them.

The difference between being an elder statesman / And posing successfully as an elder statesman / Is practically negligible.

The responsibility of great states is to serve and not to dominate the world.

As great edifices collapse of their own weight, so Heaven sets a similar limit to the growth of prosperous states.

Each State can have for enemies only other States, and not men; for between things disparate in nature there can be no real relation.

The state is the servant of the citizen, and not his master.

The State not seldom tolerates a comparatively great evil to keep out millions of lesser ills and inconveniences which otherwise would be inevitable and without remedy.