Quotes to inspire and reflect

Rumour doth double, like the voice and echo, / The numbers of the feared.

Rumor goes forth at once, Rumor than whom / No other speedier evil thing exists; / She thrives by rapid movement, and acquires / Strength as she goes; small at the first from fear, / She presently uplifts herself aloft, / And stalks upon the ground and hides her head / Among the clouds.

Rumor is a pipe / Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures.

The important thing is to abide by the rule of threes. Either you see a woman three times in quick succession and then never again, or you maintain relations over the years but make sure that the rendezvous are at least three weeks apart.

There is no useful rule without an exception.

No rule is so general, which admits not some exception.

Within the hollow crown / That rounds the mortal temples of a king / Keeps Death his court.

In reading and writing, you cannot lay down rules until you have learnt to obey them. Much more so in life.

If you have but a single ruler, you lie at the discretion of a master who has no reason to love you: and if you have several, you must bear at once their tyranny and their divisions.

The power of kings is founded on the reason and on the folly of the people, and specially on their folly.

We owe subjection and obedience to all our kings, whether good or bad, alike, for that has respect unto their office; but as to esteem and affection, these are only due to their virtue.

To rule is not so much a question of the heavy hand as the firm seat.

The subject’s love is the king’s best guard.

Whom hatred frights, / Let him not dream on sovereignty.

Power educates the potentate.

Princes are like heavenly bodies, which cause good or evil times, and which have much veneration, but no rest.

Every ruler is harsh whose rule is new.

If men think that a ruler is religious and has a reverence for the Gods, they are less afraid of suffering injustice at his hands.

A man must have very eminent qualities to hold his own without being polite.

Spiritual strength and passion, when accompanied by bad manners, only provoke loathing.

Folly often goes beyond her bounds>but impudence knows none.

Royalty does good and is badly spoken of.

Is not this the true romantic feeling—not to desire to escape life, but to prevent life from escaping you?

Routine is the god of every social system; it is the seventh heaven of business, the essential component in the success of every factory, the ideal of every statesman. The social machine should run like clockwork.

Following each divorce, he discovered anew that unmarried a man had to take women places: out to restaurants, for walks in the park, to museums and the opera and the movies—not only had to go to the movies but afterwards had to discuss them.

It is not irregular hours or irregular diet that make the romantic life.

[Romance] was a game, like bridge, in which you said things instead of playing cards. Like bridge you had to pretend you were playing for money or playing for some stakes.

Why one man rather than another? It was odd. You find yourself involved with a fellow for life just because he was the one you met when you were nineteen.

Play out the game, act well your part, and if the gods have blundered, we will not.

Perhaps one never seems so much at one's ease as when one has to play a part.

The Hudson River is like old October and tawny Indians in their camping places long ago; it is like long pipes and old tobacco; it is like cool depths and opulence; it is like the shimmer of liquid green on summer days.

Rivers are roads which move, and which carry us whither we desire to go.

The rights which a man arrogates to himself are relative to the duties which he sets himself, and to the tasks which he feels capable of performing.

What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.

In giving rights to others which belong to them, we give rights to ourselves and to our country.

This nation was founded by men of many nations and backgrounds. It was founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of eveiy man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.

1 am not so much concerned with the right of everyone to say anything he pleases as I am about our need as a self-governing people to hear everything relevant.

If the government can set aside some spot for a elk to be a elk without being bothered, or a buffalo to be a buffalo without being shot down, there ought to be some place where a Negro can be a Negro without being Jim Crowed.

Wherever there is a human being, I see God-given rights inherent in that being, whatever may be the sex or complexion.

The Moral Sense teaches us what is right, and how to avoid it—when unpopular.

Right is right only when entire.

It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.

We uniformly applaud what is right and condemn what is wrong, when it costs us nothing but the sentiment.

Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong what is against it.

There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless.

The most effective way of attacking vice is to expose it to public ridicule. People can put up with rebukes but they cannot bear being laughed at: they are prepared to be wicked but they dislike appearing ridiculous.

Mockery is often the result of a poverty of wit.

The talent of turning men into ridicule, and exposing to laughter those one converses with, is the qualification of little ungenerous tempers.