Quotes to inspire and reflect

God will not punish the man / Who makes return for an injury.

[0]ur children are the only people on whom we can safely take revenge for what was done to us.

It is difficult to fight against anger; for a man will buy revenge with his soul.

Revenge is always the joy of narrow, / Sick, and petty minds.

This is sweet: to see your foe / perish and pay to justice all he owes.

Men regard it as their right to return evil for evil— and, if they cannot, feel they have lost their liberty.

Instead of complaining that God had hidden Himself, you will give Him thanks for having revealed so much of Himself.

There is a sort of transcendental ventriloquy through which men can be made to believe that something which was said on earth came from heaven.

My own mind is the direct revelation which I have from God and far least liable to mistake in telling his will of any revelation.

The laws of changeless justice bind / Oppressor and oppressed; / And, close as sin and suffering joined, / We march to Fate abreast.

God gives each his due at the time allotted.

He who makes his law a curse, / By his own law shall surely die.

To withdraw is not to run away, and to stay is no wise action, when there’s more reason to fear than to hope.

I am Retired Leisure. I am to be met with in trim gardens. I am already come to be known by my vacant face and careless gesture, perambulating at no fixed pace nor with any settled purpose. I walk about; not to and from.

I' would like to sit still for a while but I'm restless you know and sitting still is only an ideal like celibacy and complete cleanliness.

Dismiss the old horse in good time, lest he fail in the lists and the spectators laugh.

Never have I been able to settle in life. Always seated askew, as if on the arm of a chair; ready to get up, to leave.

A wanderer is man from his birth. / He was born in a ship / On the breast of the river of Time.

In all things rest is sweet; there is sur feit / even in honey, even in Aphrodite’s lovely flowers.

Rest is the sauce of labor.

Too much rest itself becomes a pain.

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.

To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible.

A burden in the bush is worth two on your hands.

Though the wisdom or virtue of one can very rarely make many happy, the folly or vice of one man often make many miserable.

Man’s responsibility increases as that of the gods decreases.

That which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it.

Responsibility, n. A detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or ones neighbor. In the days of astrology it was customary to unload it upon a star.

No man is inherently respectable, but all women are by nature.

Respectability, n. The offspring of a liaison between a bald head and a bank account.

Concerning great things one should either be silent or speak loftily.

The honor we receive from those that fear us, is not honor; those respects are paid to royalty and not to me.

If you have any shame, forbear to pluck the beard of a dead lion.

Without feelings of respect, what is there to distinguish men from beasts?

Reverence is a good thing, and part of its value is that the more we revere a man, the more sharply are we struck by anything in him (and there is always much) that is incongruous with his greatness.

Reverence makes it possible to be whole, though ignorant. It is the wholeness of understanding.

Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws.

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight in the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing-grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the Old.

It’s the great soul that surrenders itself to fate, but a puny degenerate thing that struggles.

A calm despair, without angry convulsions or reproaches directed at heaven, is the essence of wisdom.

What cannot be altered must be borne, not blamed.

The doctrine of Necessity or Destiny is the doctrine of Toleration.

Teach us to care and not to care / Teach us to sit still.

Resignation, not mystic, not detached, but resignation open-eyed, conscious, and informed by love, is the only one of our feelings for which it is impossible to become a sham.

To be happy with human beings, we should not ask them for what they cannot give.

Not to ask is not to be denied.

Posterity is always just.

We do not content ourselves with the life we have in ourselves and in our own being; we desire to live an imaginary life in the mind of others, and for this purpose we endeavour to shine.