Quotes to inspire and reflect

We still think of human disease as the work of an organized, modernized kind of demonology, in which the bacteria are the most visible and centrally placed of our adversaries. We assume that they must somehow relish what they do.

Sleep does make us all equal, it seems to me, like his big brother—Death.

Cut if you will, with Sleep’s dull knife, / Each day to half its length, my friend,—/ The years that Time takes off my life, / He’ll take off the other end!

Then blessings on thee, my afternoon torpor/Thou makest a prince of a mental porpor.

Even where sleep is concerned, too much is a bad thing.

For sleep, one needs endless depths of blackness to sink into; daylight is too shallow, it will not cover one.

Sleep is pain’s easiest salve, and doth fulfill / All offices of death, except to kill.

Now blessings light on him that first invented this same sleep. It covers a man all over, thoughts and all, like a cloak.

Strike at a great man, and you will not miss.

Sleep hath its own world, / And a wide realm of wild reality, / And dreams in their development have breath, / And tears, and tortures, and the touch of Joy.

Folk whose own behavior is most ridiculous are always to the fore in slandering others.

If a man could say nothing against a character but what he can prove, history could not be written.

The skeptic does not mean him who doubts, but him who investigates or researches, as opposed to him who asserts and thinks that he has found.

There is nothing that more betrays a base ungenerous spirit than the giving of secret stabs to a man’s reputation. Lampoons and satires, that are written with wit and spirit, are like poisoned darts, which not only inflict a wound, but make it incurable.

When all beliefs are challenged together, the just and necessary ones have a chance to step forward and to re-establish themselves alone.

A wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic.

There’s some end at last for the man who follows a path: mere rambling is interminable.

Doubt is an element of criticism, and the tendency of criticism is necessarily skeptical.

As any action or posture, long continued, will distort and disfigure the limbs, so the mind likewise is crippled and contracted by perpetual application to the same set of ideas.

A straight path never leads anywhere except to the objective.

[H]ard as I try, daddy-o, I really do not like concert singers. They are always singing in some foreign language.

I only desire sincere relations with the worthiest of my acquaintance, that they may give me an opportunity once in a year to speak the truth.

A man must not always tell all, for that were folly: but what a man says should be what he thinks.

Civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity'is always subject to proof.

Sincerity is the highest compliment you can pay.

Nature forever puts a premium on reality. What is done for effect is seen to be done for effect; what is done for love is felt to be done for love. A man inspires affection and honor because he was not lying in wait for these.

I should say sincerity, a deep, great, genuine sincerity, is the first characteristic of all men in any way heroic.

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud.

No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean.

Men are always sincere. They change sincerities, that’s all.

The twin conceptions of sin and vindictive punishment seem to be at the root of much that is most vigorous, both in religion and politics.

We cannot well do without our sins; they are the highway of our virtue.

The public scandal is what constitutes the offence: sins sinned in secret are no sins at all.

There were sins that were too subtle to be explained, and there were others that were too terrible to be clearly mentioned. For example, there was sex, which was always smouldering just under the surface and which suddenly blew up into a tremendous row when I was about twelve.

Really to sin you have to be serious about it.

Sin is a dangerous toy in the hands of the virtuous. It should be left to the congenitally sinful, who know when to play with it and when to let it alone.

We do ourselves wrong, and too meanly estimate the holiness above us, when we deem that any act or enjoyment good in itself, is not good to do religiously.

It’s harder to confess the sin that no one believes in / Than the crime that everyone can appreciate. / For the crime is in relation to the law / And the sin is in relation to the sinner.

Between these two, the denying of sins, which we have done, and the bragging of sins, which we have not done, what a space, what a compass is there, for millions of millions of sins!

In best understandings, sin began, / Angels sinned first, then Devils, and then Man.

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! 1 say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.

The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.

Simplicity is the mean between ostentation and rusticity.

And all the loveliest things there be / Come simply, so, it seems to me.

Teach us Delight in simple things, / And Mirth that has no bitter springs.

It is proof of high culture to say the greatest matters in the simplest way.

To be simple is the best thing in the world; to be modest is the next best thing. I am not so sure about being quiet.

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.