Quotes to inspire and reflect

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?

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.

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

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

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

Learn weeping, and thou shalt gain laughing.

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

Sorrow makes us all children again.

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

Man sheds grief as his skin sheds rain.

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

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

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

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

Joys impregnate. Sorrows bring forth.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

There are places and moments in which one is so completely alone that one sees the world entire.

You and I possess manifold ideal bonds in the interests we share; but each of us has his poor body and his irremediable, incommunicable dreams.

We are fools to depend upon the society of our fellow-men. Wretched as we are, powerless as we are, they will not aid us; we shall die alone.

There are some solitary wretches who seem to have left the rest of mankind, only, as Eve left Adam, to meet the devil in private.

A solitary, unused to speaking of what he sees and feels, has mental experiences which are at once

Nature has presented us with a large faculty of entertaining ourselves alone; and often calls us to it, to teach us that we owe ourselves in part to society, but chiefly and mostly to ourselves.

Solitude is bearable only with God.

What a commentary on our civilization, when being alone is considered suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices it—like a secret vice!

We never touch but at points.

When you have shut your doors and darkened your room, remember, never to say that you are alone; for you are not alone, but God is within, and your genius is within.

It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves.

Isolation must precede true society.

To fly from, need not be to hate, mankind: / All are not fit with them to stir and toil, / Nor is it discontent to keep the mind / Deep in its fountain.

If from society we learn to live, / Tis Solitude should teach us how to die; / It hath no flatterers.

To get into the best society nowadays, one has either to feed people, amuse people, or shock people.

Those that want friends to open themselves unto are cannibals of their own hearts.

To be in it [society] is merely a bore. But to be out of it simply a tragedy.

Teas, / Where small talk dies in agonies.

There are people whom one should like very well to drop, but would not wish to be dropped by.

Human society is founded on mutual deceit; few friendships would endure if each knew what his friend said of him in his absence.

Society is a more level surface than we imagine. Wise men or absolute fools are hard to be met with, as there are few giants or dwarfs.

If all your clothes are worn to the same state, it means you go out too much.