Quotes to inspire and reflect

In our democracy officers of the government are the servants, and never the masters of the people.

A situation in a public office is secure, but laborious and mechanical, and without the two great springs of life, Hope and Fear.

A man ain’t got no right to be a public man, unless he meets the public views.

He that puts on a public gown must put off a private person.

It is not easy for a person to do any great harm when his tenure of office is short, whereas long possession begets tyranny.

Nowadays, for the sake of the advantage which is to be gained from the public revenues and from office, men want to be always in office.

Until a man can quit talking loudly to himself in order to shout down the memories of blunderings and gropings, he is in no shape for the painstaking examination of distress.

The object of psychology is to give us a totally different idea of the things we know best.

Paradoxically, only journeying backward in time and reentering the home we once knew allows us to go forward to the home we’ve always wanted.

Let us not seek our disease out of ourselves; ’tis in us, and planted in our bowels; and the mere fact that we do not perceive ourselves to be sick, renders us more hard to be cured.

To understand oneself is the classic form of consolation; to elude oneself is the romantic.

Every life is, more or less, a ruin among whose debris we have to discover what the person ought to have been.

To have known how to change the past into a few saddened smiles—is this not to master the future?

Why do analysts always answer a question with a question?

There were 117 psychoanalysts on the Pan Am flight to Vienna and I'd been treated by at least six of them. And married a seventh.

Look into the depths of your own soul and learn first to know yourself, then you will understand why

It might be said of psychoanalysis that if you give it your little finger it will soon have your whole hand.

All cases are unique, and very similar to others.

Once read thy own breast right, / And thou hast done with fears.

Do you not know, Prometheus, that words are healers of the sick temper?

Prudery is a kind of avarice, the worst of all.

Decency, not to dare to do that in public which it is decent enough to do in private.

The prudent man does himself good; the virtuous one does it to other men.

A private sin is not so prejudicial in this wrorld as a public indecency.

So soon a? prudence has begun to grow up in the brain, like a dismal fungus, it finds its first expression in a paralysis of generous acts.

If you are out of trouble, watch for danger. / And when you live well, then consider the most / your life, lest ruin take it unawares.

We are prudent people. We are afraid to let go of our petty reality in order to grasp at a great shadow.

Never exceed your rights, and they will soon become unlimited.

Prudence is but experience, which equal time equally bestows on all men, in those things they equally apply themselves unto.

He who is not a bird should not build his nest over abysses.

When you have nothing to say, or to hide, there is no need to be prudent.

The eye of prudence may never shut.

Men almost universally have acknowledged a Providence, but that fact has had no force to destroy natural aversions and fears in the presence of events.

I know not where His islands lift /Their fronded palms in air; / I only know I cannot drift / Beyond His love and care.

The gods give to mortals not everything at the same time.

The wisdom of providence is as much revealed in the rarity of genius, as in the circumstance that not everyone is deaf or blind.

Know from the bounteous heaven all riches flow; / And what man gives, the gods by man bestow.

The man whom heaven helps / has friends enough.

How dark are all the ways of god to man!

The Infinite Goodness has such wide arms that it takes whatever turns to it.

To put one’s trust in God is only a longer way of saying that one will chance it.

Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.

Mankind apparently find it easier to drive away adversity than to retain prosperity.

In victory even the cowardly like to boast, while in adverse times even the brave are discredited.

Misfortunes tell us what fortune is.

One who was abhorred by all in prosperity is adored by all in adversity.

They merit more praise who know how to suffer misery than those who temper themselves in contentment.

The virtue of prosperity is temperance; the virtue of adversity is fortitude.