Quotes to inspire and reflect

The opinions which we hold of one another, our relations with friends and kinsfolk are in no sense permanent, save in appearance, but are as eternally fluid as the sea itself.

The only thing as challenging as getting tangled in the underbrush of relationship is trying to write about it.

The first thing to learn in intercourse with others is non-interference with their own peculiar ways of being happy, provided those ways do not assume to interfere by violence with ours.

Persons are line things, but they cost so much! for thee I must pay me.

Oh, seek, my love, your newer way; / I’ll not be left in sorrow. / So long as I have yesterday, / Go take your damned to-morrow!

To find oneself jilted is a blow to one’s pride. One must do one’s best to forget it and if one doesn’t succeed, at least one must pretend to.

Spurn not the nobly-born / With love affected, / Nor treat with virtuous scorn / The well- connected.

I have loved badly, loved the great / Too soon, withdrawn my words too late; / And eaten in an echoing

Ah, in this world, where every guiding thread / Ends suddenly in the one sure centre, death, / The visionary hand of Might-have-been / Alone can fill Desire’s cup to the brim!

We as often repent the good we have done as the ill.

In refusing benefits caution must be used lest we seem to despise or to refuse them for fear of having to repay them in kind.

He who never says “no” is no true man.

He who awaits the call, but sees the need, / Already sets his spirit to refuse it.

Every abuse ought to be reformed, unless the reform is more dangerous than the abuse itself.

If anything ail a man, so that he does not perform his functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even,— for that is the seat of sympathy,—he forthwith sets about reforming the world.

I am a correctionist. If something is wrong in society, it must be fixed. At least one should try to fix it.

It is a folly second to none, / To try to improve the world.

The man who is forever disturbed about the condition of humanity either has no problems of his own or has refused to face them.

The spirit of improvement is not always a spirit of liberty, for it may aim at forcing improvements on an unwilling people.

Long customs are not easily broken: he that attempts to change the course of his own life very often labours in vain: and how shall we do that for others, which we are seldom able to do for ourselves?

The religions are obsolete when the reforms do not proceed from them.

Those who are fond of setting things to rights, have no great objection to seeing them wrong.

Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again, it will solve the problem of the age.

Men reform a thing by removing the reality from it, and then do not know what to do with the unreality that is left.

Men are more prone to revenge injuries than to requite kindnesses.

Evidence of trust begets trust, and love is reciprocated by love.

Men seldom give pleasure when they are not pleased themselves.

He who loves others is constantly loved by them. He who respects others is constantly respected by them.

No one can go on being a rebel too long without turning into an autocrat.

When 1 refuse to obey an unjust law, I do not contest the right of the majority to command, but I simply appeal from the sovereignty of the people to the sovereignty of mankind.

Rebel, n. A proponent of a new misrule who has failed to establish it.

A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.

Reason in my philosophy is only a harmony among irrational impulses.

Reason deserves to be called a prophet; for in showing us the consequence and effect of our actions in the present, does it not tell us what the future will be?

The seed haunted by the sun never fails to find its way between the stones in the ground. And the pure logician, if no sun draws him forth, remains entangled in his logic.

Reason and happiness are like other flowers— they wither when plucked.

Reason may be a small force, but it is constant, and works always in one direction, while the forces ot unreason destroy one another in futile strife.

Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit.

Logic is one thing, the human animal another. You can quite easily propose a logical solution to something and at the same time hope in your heart of hearts it won’t work out.

Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys.

Reason commands us far more imperiously than a master; in disobeying the latter we are made unhappy, in disobeying the former, fools.

The last function of reason is to recognize that there are an infinity of things which surpass it.

Logic is the art of making truth prevail.

Rational thought is interpretation according to a scheme which we cannot escape.

We may take Fancy for a companion, but must follow Reason as our guide.

What eludes logic is the most precious element in us, and one can draw nothing from a syllogism that the mind has not put there in advance.

The want of logic annoys. Too much logic bores. Life eludes logic, and everything that logic alone constructs remains artificial and forced.

Reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction.