Quotes to inspire and reflect

Prayer is the little implement / Through which Men reach / Where Presence—is denied them.

Prayer as a means to effect a private end is theft and meanness.

I have had prayers answered—most strangely so sometimes—but I think our heavenly Father’s lovingkindness has been even more evident in what He has refused me.

A prayer may chance to rise / From one whose heart lives in the grace of God. / A prayer from any other is unheeded.

Prayers are to men as dolls are to children. They are not without use and comfort, but it is not easy to take them very seriously.

The wish to pray is a prayer in itself.

We begin to praise when we begin to see a thing needs our assistance.

Mankind are tolerant of the praises of others so long as each hearer thinks he can do as well or nearly well himself.

Praise shames me, for I secretly beg for it.

All panegyrics are mingled with an infusion of poppy.

True praise comes often even to the lowly; false praise only to the strong.

Every artist loves applause. The praise of his contemporaries is the most valuable part of his recompense.

Envy bestrides praise.

Better to be despised, then, than to be ignored; or damned with condescending praise.

Praise is always pleasing, let it come from whom, or upon what account it will.

Praise is more obtrusive than a reproach.

The safest kind of praise is to foretell that another will become great in some particular way. It has the greatest show of magnanimity, and the least of it in reality.

Praises from wicked men are reproaches.

Praise makes good men better and bad men worse.

Praises from an enemy imply real merit.

Practice is nine-tenths.

Praise to the undeserving is severe satire.

A mariner must have his eye upon rocks and sands, as well as upon the North Star.

The Arab who built himself a hut with marbles from the temple of Palmyra is more philosophical than all the curators of the museums of London, Paris and Munich.

There is no need to fear the strong. All one needs is to know the method of overcoming them. There is a special jujitsu for every strong man.

I like a man who likes to see a fine barn as well as a good tragedy.

It is natural for men to want power. But to seek power actively takes a temperament baffling to both the simple and the wise. The simple cannot fathom how any man would dare presume to prevail, while the wise are amazed that any reasonable man would want the world, assuming he could get it.

True power and true politeness are above vanity.

Power, like a desolating pestilence, / Pollutes whate’er it touches.

The eagle suffers little birds to sing.

The property of power is to protect.

Power-worship blurs political judgment because it leads, almost unavoidably, to the belief that present trends will continue. Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.

There is a universal need to exercise some kind of power, or to create for one’s self the appearance of some power, if only temporarily, in the form of intoxication.

Economic power is not the same as strength of national character. Our country may be rich in goods, but we are poor in spirit.

[Wjhoever is the cause of another becoming powerful, is ruined himself; for that power is produced by him either through craft or force; and both of these are suspected by the one who has been raised to power.

Every high degree of power always involves a corresponding degree of freedom from good and evil.

To ask for power is forcing uphill a stone which after all rolls back again from the summit and seeks in headlong haste the levels of the plain.

Deny a strong man his due, and he will take all he can get.

The only prize much cared for by the powerful is power. The prize of the general is not a bigger tent, but command.

Tutelage is a comfortable relationship for the senior partner, but it is demoralizing in the long run. It breeds illusions of omniscience on one side and attitudes of impotent irresponsibility on the other.

Lost in the solitude of his immense power, he began to lose direction.

Power is not something that can be assumed or discarded at will like underwear.

Oh, it is vile for a man, if he be noble, / And when he has won to the heights of power, / To put on new manners for old and change / His countenance.

Power gives no purchase / to the hand, it will not hold, soon perishes, / and greatness goes.

Life is a search after power; and this is an element with which the world is so saturated,—there is no chink or crevice in which it is not lodged,—that no honest seeking goes unrewarded.

You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall not have both.

Power doesn’t have to show off. Power is confident, self-assuring, self-starting and self-stopping, 1 self-warming and self-justifying. When you have it, you know it.

All power is of one kind, a sharing of the nature of the world. The mind that is parallel with the laws of nature will be in the current of events,'and strong with their strength.