Quotes to inspire and reflect

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.

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.

All spiritual interests are supported by animal life.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

[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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

No emotion falls into dislike so readily as sorrow.