Quotes to inspire and reflect

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.

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

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

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

Like strength is felt from hope, and from despair.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Too much improvisation leaves the mind stupidly void.

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.

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.