Quotes to inspire and reflect

When you speak to a man, look on his eyes; when he speaks to you, look on his mouth.

Must we always talk for victory, and never once for truth, for comfort, and joy?

Do not say things. What you are stands over you the while and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.

Speech is too often not the art of concealing thought, but of quite stifling and suspending thought, so that there is none to conceal.

Loquacity, n. A disorder which renders the sufferer unable to curb his tongue when you wish to talk.

To speak agreeably to him with whom we deal is more than to speak in good words or in good order.

In Spain, the dead are more alive than the dead of any other country in the world.

The first meal in Spain was always a shock with the hors d’oeuvres, an egg course, two meat courses, vegetables, salad, and dessert and fruit.

He whose mouth is out of taste says the wine is flat.

The human body is the best picture of the human soul.

Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.

In heaven above, / And earth below, they best can serve true gladness / Who meet most feelingly the calls of sadness.

No emotion falls into dislike so readily as sorrow.

When people fall in deep distress, their native sense departs.

There is in this world in which everything wears out, everything perishes, one thing that crumbles into dust, that destroys itself still more completely, leaving behind still fewer traces of itself than Beauty: namely Grief.

It is sweet to mingle tears with tears; / Griefs, where they wound in solitude, / Wound more deeply.

There is a sort of pleasure in indulging of grief.

Why not leave their private sorrows to people? Is sorrow not, one asks, the only thing in the world people really possess?

Take this sorrow to thy heart, and make it a part of thee, and it shall nourish thee till thou art strong again.

We collected in a group in front of their door, and we experienced within ourselves a grief that was new for us, the ancient grief of the people that has no land, the grief without hope of the exodus which is renewed in every century.

There is not / any advantage to be won from grim lamentation.

Great grief is a divine and terrible radiance which transfigures the wretched.

It is better to drink of deep griefs than to taste shallow pleasures.

Learn weeping, and thou shalt gain laughing.

Sorrow makes us all children again.

There are some men above grief and some men below it.

Grief even in a child hates the light and shrinks from human eyes.

Man sheds grief as his skin sheds rain.

Grief is not in the nature of things, but in opinion.

Grief should be the instructor of the wise; / Sorrow is Knowledge.

Joys impregnate. Sorrows bring forth.

Grief drives men into habits of serious reflection, sharpens the understanding and softens the heart.

The finished man of the world must eat of every apple once.

The mark of the man of the world is absence of pretension.

My father provided; he gathered things to himself and let them fall upon the world; my clothes, my food, my luxurious hopes had fallen to me from him, and for the first time his death seemed, even at its immense stellar remove of impossibility, a grave and dreadful threat.

Our genes keep unfolding as long as we live. Harry tastes in his teeth a sourness that offended him on his father’s breath. Poor Pop. His face yellowed like a dried apricot at the end.

Any father whose son raises his hand against him is guilty: of having produced a son who raised his hand against him.

How easily a father's tenderness is recalled, and how quickly a son’s offenses vanish at the slightest word of repentance!

Greatness of name in the father oftentimes overwhelms the son; they stand too near one another. The shadow lulls the growth.

There must always be a struggle between a father and son, while one aims at power and the other at independence.

Sons have always a rebellious wish to be disillusioned by that which charmed their fathers.

Few sons, indeed, are like their fathers. Generally they are worse; but just a few are better.

In order to get as much fame as one’s father one has to be much more able than he.

Everyone calls his son his son, whether he has talents or has not talents.

Which of us has known his brother? Which of us has looked into his father's heart? Which of us has not remained forever prison-pent? Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?

You may live a long while with some people, and be on friendly terms with them, and never once speak openly with them from your soul.

I find it wholesome to be alone the better part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating.

And if I go alone, I don’t even have to talk.