Quotes to inspire and reflect

The things we laugh at are awful while they are going on, but get funny when we look back. And other people laugh because they’ve been through it too. The closest thing to humor is tragedy.

Pleasantry is never good on serious points, because it always regards subjects in that point of view in which it is not the purpose to consider them.

“Do you serve women at this bar?” “No,” says the barman, “you’ve got to bring your own.”

A truly comic, invented world must live at the sanie time as the world voe live in.

Gentle Dulness ever loves a joke.

Humor to me, Heaven help me, takes in many things. There must be courage; there must be no awe. There must be criticism, for humor, to my mind, is encapsulated in criticism.

A dirty joke is not, of course, a serious attack on morality, but it is a sort of mental rebellion, a momentary wish that things were otherwise.

The humorist has a good eye for the humbug; he does not always recognize the saint.

A jest often decides matters of importance more effectually and happily than seriousness.

The teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are content with less than absolute truth.

When once you have got hold of a vulgar joke, you may be certain that you have got hold of a subtle and spiritual idea.

Better lose a jest than a friend.

Do not seek so anxiously to be developed, to subject yourself to many influences to be played on; it is all dissipation. Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights.

Those who are believed to be most abject and humble are usually most ambitious and envious.

There must be feelings of humility, not from nature, but from penitence, not to rest in them, but to go on to greatness.

Who builds a church to God and not to fame, / Will never mark the marble with his name.

Humility has the toughest hide.

One may be humble out of pride.

Humility is the first of the virtues—for other people.

Humility is just as much the opposite of self- abasement as it is of self-exaltation.

Humility has its origin in an awareness of unworthiness, and sometimes too in a dazzled awareness of saintliness.

Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life.

The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow.

They are proud in humility; proud in that they are not proud.

Meekness, n. Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worth while.

He never labored so hard to learn a language as he did to hold his tongue and it affected him for life. The habit of reticence—of talking without meaning—is never effaced.

Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind.

Imagine now a man who is deprived of everyone he loves, and at the same time of his house, his habits, his clothes, in short, of everything he possesses: he will be a hollow man, reduced to suffering and needs, forgetful of dignity and restraint, for he who loses all often loses himself.

Altruism has always been one of biology’s deep mysteries. Why should any animal, off on its own, specified and labeled by all sorts of signals as its individual self, choose to give up its life in aid of someone else?

He who wants to do good knocks at the gate; he who loves finds the gate open.

He who is too busy doing good finds no time to be good.

The dignity of the individual demands that he be not reduced to vassalage by the largesse of others.

Human altruism which is not egoism, is sterile.

If all alms were given only from pity, all beggars would have starved long ago.

High-toned humanitarians constantly overestimate the sufferings of those they sympathize with.

A large part of altruism, even when it is perfectly honest, is grounded upon the fact that it is uncomfortable to have unhappy people about one.

A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.

Men that talk of their own benefits are not believed to talk of them because they have done them, but to have done them because they might talk of them.

Human rights are universal and indivisible. Human freedom is also indivisible: if it is denied to anyone in the world, it is therefore denied, indirectly, to all people. This is why we cannot remain silent in the face of evil or violence; silence merely encourages them.

By Jove the stranger and the poor are sent, / And what to those we give, to Jove is lent.

Isn’t it better to have men being ungrateful than to miss a chance to do good?

The rich have no more of the kingdom of heaven than they have purchased of the poor by their alms.

If I am virtuous and worthy, for whom should I not maintain a proper concern?

A man of humanity is one who, in seeking to establish himself, finds a foothold for others and who, desiring attainment for himself, helps others to attain.

In all humanism there is an element of weakness, which in some circumstances may be its ruin, connected with its contempt of fanaticism, its patience, its love of scepticism; in short, its natural goodness.

What the world needs is not redemption from sin but redemption from hunger and oppression; it has no need to pin its hopes upon Heaven, it has everything to hope for from this earth.

The human being says that the beast in him has been aroused, when what he actually means is that the human being in him has been aroused.

Just because we think we’re so wonderful doesn't mean we really are. We could be really terrible animals and just never admit it because it would hurt so much.