Quotes to inspire and reflect

To an incompetent judge I must not lie, but I may be silent; to a competent I must answer.

The judge should not be young; he should have learned to know evil, not from his own soul, but from late and long observation of the nature of evil in others.

What hunger is in relation to food, zest is in relation to life.

That judges of important causes should hold office for life is a disputable thing, for the mind grows old as well as the body.

Exuberance is better than taste.

Live thy life as it were spoil and pluck the joys that fly.

My father was the Jewish half of the family, yet it was my mother who taught me to have pride in that tradition.

The Jews generally give value. They make you pay; but they deliver the goods. In my experience the men who want something for nothing are invariably Christians.

From the beginning, the Christian was the theorizing Jew; consequently, the Jew is the practical Christian.

A Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year- old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy till they die.

Well, when Christ comes back this time, I hope He comes back mad His own self. I hope He drives the Jim Crowers out of their high places, every living last one of them from Washington to Texas.

[Jesus], a man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act.

Jealousy’s a proof of love, / But ’tis a weak and unavailing medicine; / It puts out the disease and makes it show, / But has no power to cure.

It is not love that is blind, but jealousy.

Jealousy is not at all low, but it catches us humbled and bowed down, at first sight.

Jealousy is that pain which a man feels from the apprehension that he is not equally beloved by the person whom he entirely loves.

too many creatures / both insects and humans / estimate their own value / by the amount of minor irritation / they are able to cause / to greater personalities than themselves.

I think the Romans must have aggravated one another very much, with their noses. Perhaps, they became the restless people they were, in consequence.

A word and a stone let go cannot be called back.

To great evils we submit; we resent little provocations.

Of this I am quite sure, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find we have lost the future.

The book of Nature is the book of Fate. She turns the gigantic pages—leaf after leaf—never re-turning one.

Impiety, n. Your irreverence toward my deity.

Life finds its wealth by the claims of the world, and its worth by the claims of love.

The notion of looking on at life has always been hateful to me. What am I if I am not a participant? In order to be, I must participate.

Love, children, and work are the great sources of fertilizing contact between the individual and the rest of the world.

Better be left by twenty dears / Than lie in a loveless bed; / Better a loaf that’s wet with tears, / Than cold, unsalted bread.

My trade and art is to live,.

The moment one is on the side of life “peace and security” drop out of consciousness. The only peace, the only security, is in fulfillment.

There is certainly no greater happiness than to be able to look back on a life usefully and virtuously employed, to trace our own progress in existence, by such tokens as excite neither shame nor sorrow.

Be a football to Time and Chance, the more kicks, the better, so that you inspect the whole game and know its utmost law.

Life without absorbing occupation is hell—joy consists in forgetting life.

On Wall Street, he and a few others—how many?—three hundred, four hundred, five hundred?—had become precisely that...Masters of the Universe. There was...no limit whatsoever!

Tis sweet to know that stocks will stand / When we with daisies lie, / That commerce will continue, / And trades as briskly fly.

I thought of the nameless inventor of the bathtub. I was somehow sure it was a woman. And was the inventor of the bathtub plug a man?

It must be confessed that the inventors of the mechanical arts have been much more useful to men than the inventors of syllogisms.

It is the heart always that sees, before the head can see.

Women, as most susceptible, are the best index of the coming hour.

They [the police] learned something from them Harlem riots. They used to beat your head right in public, but now they only beat it after they get you down to the station house.

After the meal, the couple retired to their bedroom. Man and wife don’t usually lie together in the daytime, but when he went outside to close the shutters, she did not protest. As soon as he put his arm around her she was aroused, like all adolescent— since a woman who has not been pregnant, remains virginal forever.

Intimacy begins with oneself. It does no good to try to find intimacy with friends, lovers and family if you are starting out from alienation and division within yourself.

When married people don’t get on they can separate, but if they’re not married it's impossible. It's a tie that only death can sever.

A man knows his companion in a long journey and a little inn.

All couples must bear the strain of getting acquainted, having been, up to then, merely intimate.

Amity itself can only be maintained by reciprocal respect, and true friends are punctilious equals.

I asked Tom if countries always apologized when they had done wrong, and he says: “Yes; the little ones does."

The greatest need of the contemporary international system is an agreed concept of order.

In relations with many domestically weak countries, a radio transmitter can be a more effective form of pressure than a squadron of B-52s.