Quotes to inspire and reflect

But what do I care whether or not I receive attention during my lifetime, if I am not certain that the world will remember me until its last darkest winter, marveling like Ronsard’s old woman?

Who has not, for the sake of his good reputation—sacrificed himself once?

When we are dead we are praised by those who survive us, though we frequently have no other merit than that of being no longer alive.

Some men seem remarkable to the world in whom neither their wives nor their valets saw anything extraordinary. Few men have been admired by their servants.

Reputation is commonly measured by the acre.

Be it true or false, what is said about men often has as much influence upon their lives, and especially upon their destinies, as what they do.

If you would not be known to do anything, never do it.

When the man is at home, his standing in society is well known and quietly taken; but when he is abroad, it is problematical, and is dependent on the success of his manners.

A man’s real life is that accorded to him in the thoughts of other men by reason of respect or natural love.

Shall I be remembered after death? I sometimes think and hope so. But I trust 1 may not be found out before my death.

Be thou, in rebuking evil, / Conscious of thine own.

The correction of silence is what kills; when you know you have transgressed, and your friend says nothing and avoids your eye.

Fear not the anger of the wise to raise; / Those best can bear reproof who merit praise.

Better a little chiding than a great deal of heartbreak.

Rash and incessant scolding runs into custom and renders itself despised.

I wonder how anyone can have the face to condemn others when he reflects upon his own thoughts.

The man who acts the least, upbraids the most.

The best preservative to keep the mind in health is the faithful admonition of a friend.

There is no defence against reproach, but obscurity; it is a kind of concomitant to greatness.

The love of posterity is the consequence of the necessity of death. If a man were sure of living forever here, he would not care about his offspring.

After people have repeated a phrase a great number of times, they begin to realize it has meaning and may even be true.

How seek the way which leadeth to our wishes? By renouncing our wishes. The crown of excellence is renunciation.

Renunciation—is a piercing Virtue—/The letting go / A Presence—for an Expectation—.

Gout is not relieved by a fine shoe nor a hangnail by a costly ring nor migraine by a tiara.

Peace is a great goal, but it is not a panacea. Neither is material wealth.

Life as we find it is too hard for us; it entails too much pain, too many disappointments, impossible tasks. We cannot do without palliative remedies.

No religion can be considered in abstraction from its followers, or even from its various types of followers.

The remedy for all blunders, the cure of blindness, the cure of crime, is love.

Religion is the reaction of human nature to its search for God.

The fact of the religious vision, and its history of persistent expansion, is our one ground for optimism. Apart from it, human life is a flash of occasional enjoyments lighting up a mass of pain and misery, a bagatelle of transient experience.

Religions are such stuff as dreams are made of.

Just because I don’t harass it like some peoples us know.don’t mean I ain't got religion.

Religion pervades intensely the whole frame of society, and is according to the temper of the mind which it inhabits, a passion, a persuasion, an excuse, a refuge; never a check.

Let us meet four times a year in a grand temple with music, and thank God for all his gifts. There is one sun. There is one God. Let us have one religion. Then all mankind will be brethren.

Without their fictions the truths of religion would for the multitude be neither intelligible nor even apprehensible; and the prophets would prophesy and the teachers teach in vain.

Religion is indeed a convention which a man must be bred in to endure with any patience; and yet religion, for all its poetic motley, comes closer than work-a-day opinion to the heart of things.

Religion is the love of life in the consciousness of impotence.

Religion should be disentangled as much as possible from history and authority and metaphysics, and made to rest honestly on one’s fine feelings, on one's indomitable optimism and trust in life.

Religions which have any very strong hold over men’s actions have generally some instinctive basis.

Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about his taste, nor condemn him, if we are just, for knowing so human a passion.

Religion blushing, veils her sacred fires, / And unawares Morality expires.

Religion is something infinitely simple, ingenuous. It is not knowledge, not content of feeling,... it is not duty and not renunciation, it is not restriction: but in the infinite extent of the universe it is a direction of the heart.

You corrupt religion either in favour of your friends, or against your enemies.

That a religion may be true, it must have knowledge of our nature.

In the' long term we can hope that religion will change the nature of man and reduce conflict. But history is not encouraging in this respect. The bloodiest wars in history have been religious^wars.

Religion is so great a thing that it is right that those who will not take the trouble to seek it, if it be obscure, should be deprived of it.

Wherever on earth the religious neurosis has appeared we find it tied to three dangerous dietary demands: solitude, fasting, and sexual abstinence.

True religion is slow in growth, and, when once planted, is difficult of dislodgement; but its intellectual counterfeit has no root in itself: it springs up suddenly, it suddenly withers.