Quotes to inspire and reflect

The State is our neighbors; our neighbors are the State.

When fear enters the heart of a man at hearing the names of candidates and the reading of laws that are proposed, then is the State safe, but when these things are heard without regard, as above or below us, then is the Commonwealth sick or dead.

The State is a poor, good beast who means the best: it means friendly.

A state worthy of the name has no friends—only interests.

A thousand years scarce serve to form a state; / An hour may lay it in the dust.

The modern state no longer has anything but rights; it does not recognize duties any more.

The state exists for the sake of a good life, and not for the sake of life only.

We weed out the darnel from the corn and the unfit in war, but do not excuse evil men from the service of the state.

Going to college offered me the chance to play football for four more years.

Baseball is meant to be fun, and not all the solemn money-men in fur-collared greatcoats, not all the scruffy media cameramen and sour-faced reporters that crowd around the dugouts can quite smother the exhilarating spaciousness and grace of this impudently relaxed sport, a game of innumerable potential redemptions and curious disappointments.

When I were a young man, I used to play baseball and steal bases just like Jackie [Robinson], If the empire would rule me out, I would get mad and hit the empire.

Too much improvisation leaves the mind stupidly void.

The individual never asserts himself more than when he forgets himself.

We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it. This is the reason why it is so difficult for any but natives to speak a language correctly or idiomatically.

Improvisation is the essence of good talk. Heaven defend us from the talker who doles out things prepared for us! But let heaven not less defend us from the beautifully spontaneous writer who puts his trust in the inspiration of the moment!

Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room; / And hermits are contented with their cells.

Pressed, I would define spirituality as the shadow of light humanity casts as it moves through the darkness of everything that can be explained.

To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.

All spiritual interests are supported by animal life.

There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.

The soul may ask God for anything, and never fail.

To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine.

One of our problems today is that we are not well acquainted with the literature of the spirit. We’re interested in the news of the day and the problems of the hour.

Give unto us this day the daily manna / Without which, in this desert where we dwell, / He must go backward who would most advance.

I am certainly convinced that it is one of the greatest impulses of mankind to arrive at something higher than a natural state.

Spirit is an invisible force made visible in all life.

Wearing spectacles makes men conceited, because spectacles raise them to a degree of sensual perfection which is far above the power of their own nature.

There is no secrecy comparable to celerity.

It is the man determines what is said, not the words.

Specialized meaninglessness has come to be regarded, in certain circles, as a kind of hall mark of true science.

There can be no fairer ambition than to excel in talk; to be affable, gay, ready, clear, and welcome.

Nature, which gave us two eyes to see, and two ears to hear, has given us but one tongue to speak.

[A] rejection of the way a woman speaks is often a way of blaming or dismissing her without dealing with the content of what she is saying.

Just as our bread, mixed and baked, packaged and sold without benefit of accident or human frailty, is uniformly good and uniformly tasteless, $0 will our speech become one speech.

Surely human affairs would be far happier if the power in men to be silent were the same as that to speak. But experience more than sufficiently teaches that men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more easily than their words.

When I think over what I have said, I envy dumb people.

There are some who speak well and write badly. For the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than they think of without that warmth.

It is easy to utter what has been kept silent, but impossible to recall what has been uttered.

The unluckiest insolvent in the world is the man whose expenditure of speech is too great for his income of ideas.

Every man may speak truly, but to speak methodically, prudently, and fully is a talent that few men have.

Whom the disease of talking still once posses- seth, he can never hold his peace.

The trumpet does not more stun you by its loudness, than a whisper teases you by its provoking inaudibility.

Nobody talks much that doesn’t say unwise things—things he did not mean to say; as no person plays much without striking a false note sometimes.

No glass renders a man’s form or likeness so true as his speech.

People do not seem to talk for the sake of expressing their opinions, but to maintain an opinion for the sake of talking.

There is always time to add a word, never to withdraw one.

In much of your talking, thinking is half murdered. / For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.

Is there any place where there is no traffic in empty talk? Is there on this earth one who does not worship himself talking?