Quotes
Quotes to inspire and reflect
People exercise an unconscious selection in being influenced.
8
Adultery is an evil only inasmuch as it is a theft; but we do not steal that which is given to us.
12
When cheated, wife or husband feels the same.
10
Next to Elka lay a man’s form. Another in my place would have made an uproar, and enough noise to rouse the whole town, but the thought occurred to me that I might wake the child.
14
Whatever may be the general endeavor of a community to render its members equal and alike, the personal pride of individuals will always seek to rise above the line, and to form somewhere an inequality to their own advantage.
13
A curious and eager soul was imprisoned in all this lard, but by dint of never refusing himself a pheasant or a goose or his daily procession of Roman wines, he was his own bitter jailer.
13
If we had to tolerate in others all that we permit in ourselves, life would become completely unbearable.
10
O, give it up, old chap! Sleep it off!
14
The man whom God wills to slay in the struggle of life He first individualizes.
13
The flower you single out is a rejection of all other flowers; nevertheless, only on these terms is it beautiful.
12
The individual man tries to escape the race. And as soon as he ceases to represent the race, he represents man.
9
If individuality has no play, society does not advance; if individuality breaks out of all bounds, society perishes.
11
Man is more interesting than men. God made him and not them in his image. Each one is more precious than all.
10
We fancy men are individuals; so are pumpkins; but every pumpkin in the field goes through every point of pumpkin history.
6
The absolutely banal—my sense of my own uniqueness.
22
Every individual strives to grow and exclude and to exclude and grow, to the extremities of the universe, and to impose the law of its being on every other creature.
6
The function of the society is to cultivate the individual. It is not the function of the individual to support society.
15
A good indignation brings out all one’s powers.
6
He injures a fair lady that beholds her not.
11
O, if thou car'st not whom I love / Alas, thou lov’st not me.
19
For a Russian to be chivalrous with an American is a spiritual impossibility, a conradiction in terms.
15
No wind serves him who addresses his voyage to no certain port.
9
Speak what you think today in words as hard as cannon balls, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today.
6
I wish to say what I think and feel today, with the proviso that tomorrow perhaps I shall contradict it all.
6
O thrice unhappy home / Whose master doesn t know the difference between a watt and an ohm!
21
A bad workman never gets a good tool.
10
Every man contemplates an angel in his future self.
5
Happy are they that hear their detractions and can put them to mending.
8
We look for some reward of our endeavors and are disappointed; not success, not happiness, not even peace of conscience, crowns our ineffectual efforts to do well. Our frailties are invincible, our virtues barren; the battle goes sore against us to the going down of the sun.
20
Asks the Possible of the Impossible, “Where is your dwelling-place?” / “In the dreams of the Impotent,” comes the answer.
22
The worst pain a man can have is to know much and be impotent to act.
15
The realization that he was utterly powerless was like the blow of a sledgehammer, yet it was curiously calming as well.
13
There is no deformity / But saves us from a dream.
30
Shall we go on conferring our Civilization upon the peoples that sit in darkness, or shall we give those poor things a rest?
10
The Fates, like an absent-minded printer, seldom allow a single line to stand perfect and unmarred.
6
1 he habit of looking for beauty in everything makes us notice the shortcomings of things; our sense, hungry for complete satisfaction, misses the perfection it demands.
6
All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be effort, and the law of human judgment, mercy.
26
What day is so festal it fails to reveal some theft?
12
“Pity for all” would be hardness and tyranny toward you, my dear neighbor.
9
The perfect human being is uninteresting—the Buddha who leaves the world, you know. It is the imperfections of life that are lovable.
15
He is not good himself who speaks well of everybody alike.
10
In the beginning, before the arrival of the white men, I had considered myself neutral. I had wanted neither side to win, neither the army nor the rebels. As it turned out, both sides lost.
12
We feel and know that we are eternal.
11
What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.
6
All the doctrines that have flourished in the world about immortality have hardly affected men’s natural sentiment in the face of death.
7
If you question any candid person who is no longer young, he is very likely to tell you that, having tasted iife in this world, he has no wish to begin again as a “new boy" in another.
10
Should this my firm persuasion of the soul’s immortality prove to be a mere delusion, it is at least a pleasing delusion, and I will cherish it to my latest breath.
17
It has been said that the immortality of the soul is a “grand peut-etre”—but it is still a grand one. Everybody clings to it—the stupidest, and dullest, and wickedest of human bipeds is still persuaded that he is immortal.
9