Quotes to inspire and reflect

And, after all, what is a lie? ’Tis but / The truth in masquerade; and I defy / Historians—heroes— lawyers—priests, to put / A fact without some leaven of a lie.

Lying is the only art form that the public sanctions and instinctively prefers to reality.

Men first feel necessity, then look for utility, next attend to comfort, still later amuse themselves with pleasure, thence grow dissolute in luxury, and finally go mad and waste their substance.

A lie faces God and shrinks from man.

What nature requires is obtainable, and within easy reach. It’s for the superfluous we sweat.

They must know but little of mankind who can imagine that, after they have been once seduced by luxury, they can ever renounce it.

The lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master.

Luxury either comes of riches or makes them necessary; it corrupts at once rich and poor, the rich by possession and the poor by covetousness.

Our expense is almost all for conformity. It is for cake that we all run in debt.

Of all affliction taught a lover yet, / ’Tis sure the hardest science to forget.

All lovers unconsciously establish their own rules of the game, which from the outset admit of no transgression.

Like any lover, he desired to please; suffered agonies at the thought of failure, and brightened his dress with smart ties and handkerchiefs and other youthful touches.

A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all.

When a love relationship is at its height there is no room left for any interest in the environment; a pair of lovers are sufficient to themselves.

There is desire / in those who love to hear about their loved ones’ pains.

Lovers who love truly do not write down their happiness.

The lover is made happier by his love than the object of his affection.

Lovers are commonly industrious to make themselves uneasy.

Hatred which is entirely conquered by love passes into love, and love on that account is greater than if it had not been preceded by hatred.

The face of a lover is an unknown, precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment.

It is the missed opportunity that counts, and in a love that vainly yearns from behind prison bars you have perchance the love supreme.

Hatred, as well as love, renders its votaries credulous.

After all, my erstwhile dear, / My no longer cherished, / Need we say it was no love, / Just because it perished?

It is not because other people are dead that our affection for them grows faint, it is because we ourself are dying.

Women’s hearts are like old china, none the worse for a break or two.

We are never so defenceless against suffering as when we love, never so helplessly unhappy as when we have lost our loved object or its love.

[L]ove was an appalling bore once you had ceased loving. All that time wasted.

It is obviously quite difficult to be no longer loved when we are still in love, but it is incomparably more painful to be loved when we ourselves no longer love.

We must try to love one another.... The terrible and beautiful sentence, the last, the final wisdom that the earth can give, is remembered at the end, is spoken too late, wearily. It stands there, awful and untraduced, above the dusty racket of our lives. No forgetting, no forgiving, no denying, no explaining, no hating.

You must love him, ere to you / He will seem worthy of your love.

There may be two equally good, equally gifted, equally beautiful, but there may never be two that love one another equally well.

Love is / unworldly / and nothing / comes of it but love.

Love has various lodgings; the same word does not always signify the same thing.

Love has features which pierce all hearts, he wears a bandage which conceals the faults of those beloved. Fie has wings, he comes quickly and flies away the same.

Love, like a sense of humor, is now claimed by everyone even though Love, like a sense of humor, is rather more rare than not, and to most of us poor muddlers unbearable at full strength.

Love’s gift cannot be given, / it waits to be accepted.

Love remains a secret even when spoken, / for only a lover truly "knows that he is loved.

Love is an endless mystery, / for it has nothing else to explain it.

To be loved at first sight, a man should have at the same time something to respect and something to pity in his face.

Let the dead have the immortality of fame, but the living the immortality of love.

A woman holds dreadful power over a man who is in love with her but she should realize that the quality and force of his love is the index of his potential contempt and hatred.

Romance is a means to the end of selfcompletion, but love is an end in itself.

Love’s best habit is a soothing tongue.

All love is sweet, / Given or returned. Common as light is love, / And its familiar voice wearies not ever.

Base men being in love have then a nobility in their natures more than is native to them.

True love’s the gift which God has given / To man alone beneath the heaven.

When we love animals and children too much, we love them at the expense of men.

Love rules the court, the camp, the grove, / And men below, and saints above; / For love is heaven, and heaven is love.