Quotes to inspire and reflect

I have never seen greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.

Every man carries the entire form of human condition.

Man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly. He is like a watch of which the most that can be said is that its cosmetic effect is good.

i suppose the human race / is doing the best it can / but hells bells thats / only an explanation / its not an excuse.

Whatever profits man, that is the truth. In him all nature is comprehended, in all nature only he is created, and all nature only for him. He is the measure of all things, and his welfare is the sole and single criterion of truth.

Among all creatures that breathe on earth and crawl on it / there is not anywhere a thing more dismal than man is.

The Family of Man is more than three billion strong. It lives in more than one hundred nations. Most of its members are not white. Most of them are not Christians. Most of them know nothing about free enterprise, or due process of law or the Australian ballot.

Mankind are earthen jugs with spirits in them.

It were no slight attainment could we merely fulfil what the nature of man implies.

Man is not only a contributary creature, but a total creature; he does not only make one, but he is all; he is not a piece of the world, but the world itself; and next to the glory of God, the reason why there is a world.

The majority of mankind is lazyminded, incurious, absorbed in vanities, and tepid in emotion, and is therefore incapable of either much doubt or much faith.

Every people is a chosen people in its own mind. And it is rather amusing that their name for themselves usually means mankind.

Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust.

Man is unique not because he does science, and he is unique not because he does art, but because science and art equally are expressions of his marvelous plasticity of mind.

Man is a singular creature. He has a set of gifts which make him unique among the animals: so that, unlike them, he is not a figure in the landscape—he is a shaper of the landscape.

Know, man hath all which Nature hath, but more, / And in that more lie all his hopes of good.

One likes people much better when they're battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortunate than when they triumph.

Malicious tongues spread their poison abroad and nothing here below is proof against them.

When malice has reason on its side it becomes proud, and parades reason in all its splendour.

Man loves malice, but not against one-eyed men nor the unfortunate, but against the fortunate and proud.

The malicious have a dark happiness.

Malice often takes the garb of truth.

Man’s life is a warfare against the malice of men.

What is madness? To have erroneous perceptions and to reason correctly from them.

I am convinced that we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet / Are of imagination all compact.

A body seriously out of equilibrium, either with itself or with its environment, perishes outright. Not so a mind. Madness and suffering can set themselves no limit.

Here’s an object more of dread / Than aught the grave contains— / A human form with reason fled, / While wretched life remains.

Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.

Better mad with the rest of the world than wise alone.

Sanity is very rare: every man almost, and every woman, has a dash of madness.

The wily lunatic is lost if through the narrowest crack he allows a sane eye to peer into his locked universe and thus profane it.

There is less harm to be suffered in being mad among madmen than in being sane all by oneself.

What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive the old art of Lying.

One man lies in his words, and gets a bad reputation; another in his manners, and enjoys a good one.

It is a general rule that when the grain of truth cannot be found, men will swallow great helpings of falsehood.

O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

In plain truth, lying is an accursed vice. We are not men, nor have other tie upon one another, but by our word.

That lies should be necessary to life is part and parcel of the terrible and questionable character of existence.

I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie.

Lying is not only excusable; it is not only innocent, and instinctive; it is, above all, necessary and unavoidable. Without the ameliorations that it offers life would become a mere syllogism, and hence too metallic to be borne.

As hypocrisy is said to be the highest compliment to virtue, the art of lying is the strongest acknowledgment of the force of truth.

Life is a system of half-truths and lies, / Opportunistic, convenient evasion.

He saw she was lying but it was a brave lie. They talked from their hearts—with the half truths and evasions peculiar to that organ, which has never been famed as an instrument of precision.

A single lie destroys a whole reputation for integrity.

Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, hut is a stab at the health of human society.

A falsehood is, in one sense, a dead thing; but too often it moves about, galvanized by self-will, and pushes the living out of their seats.