Quotes to inspire and reflect

The soul that has no established aim loses itself.

The idea of life having a purpose stands and falls with the religious system.

A man should have any number of little aims about which he should be conscious and for which he should have names, but he should have neither name for, nor consciousness concerning, the main aim of his life.

Purity / Is obscurity.

When he has no lust, no hatred, / A man walks safely among the things of lust and hatred

Whoso doth no evil is apt to suspect none.

Puritanism had fallen into such disrepair that not even the oldest spinster thought of putting Susanna in a ducking stool; not even the oldest farmer suspected that Susanna’s diabolical beauty had made his cow run dry.

The sun, though it passes through dirty places, yet remains as pure as before.

There is no land of false wit which has been so recommended by the practice of all ages, as that which consists in a jingle of words, and is comprehended under the general name of Punning.

The goodness of the true pun is in the direct ratio of its intolerability.

The compensation for a death sentence is knowledge of the exact hour when one is to die. A great luxury, but one that is well earned.

It is far more ignominious to die by justice than by an unjust sedition.

He only may chastise who loves.

Punishment is a vital need of the human soul.

The fact that the beating had not hurt was a sort of victory and partially wiped out the shame of the bed-wetting. I was even incautious enough to wear a grin on my face.

The first of all laws is to respect the laws: the severity of penalties is only a vain resource, invented by little minds in order to substitute terror for that respect which they have no means of obtaining.

Many a man spanks his / children for / things his own / father should have / spanked out of him.

I have never observed other effects of whipping than to render boys more cowardly, or more willfully obstinate.

Many punishments sometimes, and in some cases, as much discredit a prince as many funerals a physician.

Crime and punishment grow out of one stem.

Rather than waste precious time arguing, I went up and started serving my “sentence” without delay. It was usually about an hour for epigrams; somewhat longer for a paradox.

[Wjhatever the punishment, once a specific crime has appeared for the first time, its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence could ever have been.

We are not saints, but we have kept our appointment. How many people can boast as much?

Few things tend more to alienate friendship than a want of punctuality in our engagements.

Zuckerman, sucker though he was for seriousness, was still not going to be drawn into a discussion about agents and editors. If ever there was a reason for an American writer to seek asylum in Red China, it would be to put ten thousand miles between himself and those discussions.

Television wrecked the short-story branch of the industry, and now accountants and business school graduates dominate book publishing. They feel that money spent on someone’s first novel is good money down a rat hole.

What are the publications that succeed? Those that pretend to teach the public that the persons they have been accustomed unwittingly to look up to as the lights of the earth are no better than themselves.

A presentation copy, reader,—if haply you are yet innocent of such favours—is a copy of a book which does not sell, sent you by the author.

There is a photographer in every bush, going about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.

I am happy to exhibit, but not to put myself on exhibition.

What orators lack in depth they make up to you in length.

In oratory the greatest art is to hide art.

All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.

An orator can hardly get beyond commonplaces: if he does, he gets beyond his hearers.

Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable.

It fell to me in these coming days and months to express their sentiments on suitable occasions. This I was able to do, because they were mine also. There was a white glow, overpowering, sublime, which ran through our island from end to end.

There is no group in America that can withstand the force of an aroused public opinion,

A government can be no better than the public opinion which sustains it.

A universal leeling, whether well or ill founded, cannot be safely disregarded.

With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed. Consequently he who molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions.

About things on which the public thinks long it commonly attains to think right.

The idea of what the public will think prevents the public from ever thinking at all, and acts as a spell on the exercise of private judgment.

What we call public opinion is generally public sentiment.

According to the experience of all but the most accomplished jugglers, it is easier to keep one ball in the air than many.

Nothing is more dangerous in wartime than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup Poll, always feeling one’s pulse and taking one’s temperature.

When the multitude detests a man, inquiry is necessary; when the multitude likes a man, inquiry is equally necessary.

Your public servants serve you right; indeed often they serve you better than your apathy and indifference deserve.

As soon as public service ceases to be the chief business of the citizens, and they would rather serve with their money than with their persons, the State is not far from its fall.