Quotes to inspire and reflect

’Tis in vain to speak reason where ’twill not be heard.

Reason can wrestle / And overthrow terror.

The difference between the reason of man and the instinct of the beast is this, that the beast does but know, but the man knows that he knows.

Reason flies / When following the senses, on clipped wings.

The mind resorts to reason for want of training.

More wisdom is latent in things-as-they-are than in all the words men use.

You too must not count overmuch on your reality as you feel it today, since, like that of yesterday, it may prove an illusion for you tomorrow.

To mention a loved object, a person, or a place to someone else is to invest that object with reality.

Facts as facts do not always create a spirit of reality, because reality is a spirit.

What is actual is actual only for one time / And only for one place.

We take our shape, it is true, within and against that cage of reality bequeathed us at our birth; and yet it is precisely through our dependence on this reality that we are most endlessly betrayed.

You ride astride the imaginary in order to hunt down the real.

Let us replace sentimentalism by realism, and dare to uncover those simple and terrible laws which, be they seen or unseen, pervade and govern.

Intuition? Bosh! Women, in fact, are the supreme realists of the race.

There’s nothing people can’t contrive to praise or condemn and find justification for doing so, according to their age and their inclinations.

In the conduct of life we make use of deliberation to justify ourselves in doing what we want to do.

We do what we can, and then make a theory to prove our performance the best.

The fox condemns the trap, not himself.

The sparrow is sorry for the peacock at the burden of its tail.

If you leap into a well, Providence is not bound to fetch you out.

To call a king “Prince” is pleasing, because it diminishes his rank.

It is a maxim, that those to whom everybody allows the second place, have an undoubted title to the first.

The good Lord sees your heart, not the braid on your jacket, before Him we are all in our birthday suits, generals and common men alike.

There may be as much nobility in being last as in being first, because the two positions are equally necessary in the world, the one to complement the other.

Bottom is bottom, even if it is turned upside down.

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

Detestation of the high is the involuntary homage of the low.

The defeats and victories of the fellows at the top aren t always defeats and victories for the fellows at the bottom.

My heart leaps up when I behold / A rainbow in the sky: / So was it when my life began; / So is it now I am a man; / So be it when I shall grow old, / Or let me die!

One can find so many pains when the rain is falling.

Rain is good for vegetables, and for the animals who eat those vegetables, and for the animals who eat those animals.

It rained for four years, eleven months, and two days. There were periods of drizzle during which everyone put on his full dress and a convalescent look to celebrate the clearing, but people soon grew accustomed to interpret the pauses as a sign of redoubled rain.

The radio is now something people listen to while they are doing something else.

The good rain, like a bad preacher, does not know when to leave off.

You sometimes find something good in the lunatic fringe. In fact, we have got as part of our social and economic government today a whole lot of things which in my boyhood were considered lunatic fringe, and yet they are now part of everyday life.

The spirit of our American radicalism is destructive and aimless: it is not loving, it has no ulterior and divine ends; but is destructive only out of hatred and selfishness.

Segregation is on its deathbed—the question now is, how costly will the segregationists make the funeral?

Everybody should take each other as they are, white, black, Indians, Creole. Then there would be no prejudice, nations would get along.

The plague of racism is insidious, entering into our minds as smoothly and quietly and invisibly as floating airborne microbes enter into our bodies to find lifelong purchase in our bloodstreams.

Who makes and keeps the Jew or the Negro base, who but you, who exclude them from the rights which others enjoy?

Most men are rich in borrowed sufficiency: a man may very well say a good thing, give a good answer, cite a good sentence, without at all seeing the force of either the one or the other.

Though old the thought and oft exprest, / ’Tis his at last who says it best.

The same reason that makes us wrangle with a neighbor, causes a war between princes.

It is in disputes as in armies, where the weaker side sets up false lights, and makes a great noise, to make the enemy believe them more numerous and strong than they really are.

Most quarrels amplify a misunderstanding.

When we quarrel, how we wish we had been blameless.

Looking at God instantly reduces our disposition to dissent from our brother.

Little quarrels often prove / To be but new recruits of love.