Quotes to inspire and reflect

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Really to sin you have to be serious about it.

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.

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.

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.

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

Simplicity is the mean between ostentation and rusticity.

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

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

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.

The uncomfortable truth seems to be that the amount of talk by women has been measured less against the amount of men’s talk than against the expectation of female silence.

An absolute silence leads to sadness: it is the image of death.

By diminishing the value of silence, publicity has also diminished that of language. The two are inseparable: knowing how to speak has always meant knowing how to keep silent, knowing that there are times when one should say nothing.

Many a time the thing left silent makes for happiness.

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together, that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the daylight of Life, which they are henceforth to rule.

Do you wish people to believe good of you? Don’t speak.

Your highest female grace is silence.

Silence is sorrow’s best food.

The words the happy say / Are paltry melody / But those the silent feel / Are beautiful—.

The stillest tongue can be the truest friend.

Speech is of time, silence is of eternity.

Silence is all we dread. / There's Ransom in a Voice— / But Silence is Infinity.

When I walk with a camera, I walk from shot to shot, reading the light on a calibrated meter. When I walk without a camera, my own shutter opens, and the moment's light prints on my own silver gut. When

The eye obeys exactly the action of the mind.

I do not find illness an eminence, and I do not understand how people can use it to draw attention to themselves since the attention they draw is nearly always reluctantly given and unpleasantly carried out.

Our sight is the most perfect and most delightful of all our senses. It fills the mind with the largest variety of ideas, converses with its objects at the greatest distance, and continues the longest in action without being tired or satiated with its proper enjoyments.

The sleep of a sick man has keen eyes. / It is a sleep unsleeping.

The diseases which destroy a man are no less natural than the instincts which preserve him.

A cough is something that you yourself can’t help, but everybody else does on purpose just to torment you.

The sick woman especially: no one surpasses her in refinements for ruling, oppressing, tyrannising.

How convalescence shrinks a man back to his pristine stature! where is now the space, which he occupied so lately, in his own, in the family’s eye?

Disease makes men more physical, it leaves them nothing but body.