Quotes to inspire and reflect

All the wise world is little else, in nature, / But parasites or subparasites.

The parasites live where the great have little secret sores.

Life is a paradox. Every truth has its counterpart which contradicts it; and every philosopher supplies the logic for his own undoing.

He who confronts the paradoxical exposes himself to reality.

A little amateur painting in water-colour shows the innocent and quiet mind.

How vain painting is—we admire the realistic depiction of objects which in their original state we don’t admire at all.

One picture in ten thousand, perhaps, ought to live in the applause of mankind, from generation to generation until the colors fade and blacken out of sight or the canvas rot entirely away.

The picture waits for my verdict; it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claim to praise.

One ought not to return injustice, nor do evil to anybody in the world, no matter what one may have suffered from them.

In painting, the most brilliant colors, spread at random and without design, will give far less pleasure than the simplest outline of a figure.

Rendering oneself unarmed when one had been the best-armed, out of a height of feeling—that is the means to real peace, which must always rest on a peace of mind.

The distant Trojans never injured me.

Mental violence has no potency and injures only the person whose thoughts are violent. It is otherwise with mental nonviolence. It has potency which the world does not yet know.

Non-violence is not a garment to be put on and ofl at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our very being.

It is open to a war resister to judge between the combatants and wish success to the one who has justice on his side. By so judging he is more likely to bring peace between the two than by remaining a mere spectator.

The peace of the man who has forsworn the use of the bullet seems to me not quite peace, but a canting impotence.

Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is one’s self.

If you have a nation of men who have risen to that height of moral cultivation that they will not declare war or carry arms, for they have not so much madness left in their brains, you have a nation of lovers, of benefactors, of true, great, and able men.

Do not base your life on the judgments of others; first, because they are as likely to be mistaken as you are, and further, because you cannot know that they are telling you their true thoughts.

It is the tragedy of other people that they are to us merely showcases for the very perishable collections of our own mind.

We are never the same with others as when we are alone; we are different, even, when we are in the dark with them.

Just as much as we see in others we have in ourselves.

None knows the weight of another’s burden.

Most often it happens that one attributes to others only the feelings of which one is capable oneself.

It is when we try to grapple with another man’s intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering, and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun.

We cannot forgive another for not being ourselves.

We are better able to study our neighbors than ourselves, and their actions than our own.

I often marvel how it is that though each man loves himself beyond all else, he should yet value his own opinion of himself less than that of others.

Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.

All good things which exist are the fruits of originality.

Order always weighs on the individual. Disorder makes him wish for the police or for death. These are two extreme circumstances in which human nature is not at ease.

He is great who is what he is from nature and who never reminds us of others.

The virtue of the soul does not consist in flying high, but in walking orderly.

Peace is present when man can see the face that is composed of things that have meaning and are in their place. Peace is present when things form part of a whole greater than their sum, as the diverse minerals in the ground collect to become the tree.

Symmetry is ennui, and ennui is the very essence of grief and melancholy. Despair yawns.

Watch out for the fellow who talks about putting things in order! Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control.

It is meritorious to insist on forms; religion and all else naturally clothes itself in forms. Everywhere the formed world is the only habitable one.

If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn’t. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.

One day everything will be well, that is our hope: / Everything’s fine today, that is our illusion.

Now, as never before, hundreds of millions of men and women—who had formerly believed that stoic resignation in the face of hunger and disease and darkness was the best one could could do—have come alive with a new sense that the means are at hand with which to make for themselves a better life.

Optimism approves of everything, submits to everything, believes everything; it is the virtue above all of the taxpayer.

Optimism, n. The doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly, everything good, especially the bad, and everything right that is wrong.

Men naturally despise those who court them, but respect those who do not give way to them.

Opposition, n. In politics the party that prevents the Government from running amuck by hamstringing it.

Many a man’s strength is in opposition, and when that faileth, he groweth out of use.

Look what can happen in this country, they’d say. A girl lives in some out-of-the-way town for nineteen years, so poor she can’t afford a magazine, and then she gets a scholarship to college and wins a prize here and a prize there and ends up steering New York like her own private car.

Opinion is called the queen of the world; it is so, for when reason opposes it, it is condemned to death. It must rise twenty times from its ashes to gradually drive away the usurper.

Remember that you ought to behave in life as you would at a banquet. As something is being passed around, it comes to you; stretch out your hand, take a portion of it politely. It passes on; do not detain it. Or it has not come to you yet; do not project your desire to meet it, but wait until it comes in front of you.