Quotes to inspire and reflect

The dictum that human nature cannot be changed is one of those tiresome platitudes that conceal from the ignorant the depths of their own ignorance.

It is usually the case with most men that their nature is so constituted that they pity those who fare badly and envy those who fare well.

To be natural means to dare to be as immoral as Nature is.

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.

That a thing is unnatural ... is no argument for its being blamable; since the most criminal actions are, to a being like man, not more unnatural than most of the virtues.

It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous for its prey.

The thief and the murderer follow nature just as much as the philanthropist.

Before Man made us citizens, great Nature made us men.

The perfect joys of heaven do not satisfy the cravings of nature.

Drive Nature from your door with a pitchfork, and she will return again and again.

Never can custom conquer nature, for she is ever unconquered.

It is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates.

At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider every spot as the possible site of a house.

A man’s house is his stage. Others walk on to play their bit parts. Now and again a soliloquy, a birth, an adultery.

Welcome is the best cheer.

All saints can do miracles, but few of them can keep a hotel.

When hospitality becomes an art, it loses its very soul.

Happy the man who never puts on a face, but receives every visitor with that countenance he has on.

The hospitable instinct is not wholly altruistic. There is pride and egoism mixed up with it.

It is nothing won to admit men with an open door, and to receive them with a shut and reserved countenance.

Hope should no more be a virtue than fear; we fear and we hope, according to what is promised or threatened us.

What is there / more kindly than the feeling between host and guest?

Hope is brightest when it dawns from fears.

Hope is an echo, hope ties itself yonder, yonder.

Oh, what a valiant faculty is hope, that in a mortal subject, and in a moment, makes nothing of usurping infinity, immensity, eternity, and of supplying its master's indigence, at its pleasure, with all things he can imagine or desire!

Extreme hopes are born of extreme misery.

the only way boss / to keep hope in the world / is to keep changing its / population frequently.

Hope has as many lives as a cat or a king.

Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, sickness, of captivity, would, without this comfort, be insupportable.

The short span of life forbids us to take on far- reaching hopes.

In the time of trouble avert not thy face from hope, for the soft marrow abideth in the hard bone.

Death is the greatest evil, because it cuts off hope.

Ten thousand men possess ten thousand hopes. / —A few bear fruit in happiness; the others go awry.

Hope is a great falsifier of truth.

The reason of idleness and of crime is the deferring of our hopes.

Hope is a strange invention— / A Patent of the Heart— / In unremitting action / Yet never wearing out—.

Hope is a risk that must be run.

It is sure that those are most desirous of honour or glory who cry out loudest of its abuse and the vanity of the world.

Great power, which incites / Great envy, hurls some men to destruction; they are drowned / In a long, splendid stream of honors.

Let a prize lower my position, if it causes me to be read; that I prefer immediately to all the honors.

Great honours are great burdens, but on whom / They are cast with envy, he doth bear two loads.

[D]on’t come giving me, who’s old enough to die and too near blind to create anything any more anyhow, a great big banquet that you eat up in honor of your own stomachs as much as in honor of me— who's toothless and can’t eat.

High honors are sweet / To a man’s heart, but ever / They stand close to the brink of grief.

A medal glitters, but it also casts a shadow.

Honesty’s praised, then left to freeze.

A show of a certain amount of honesty is in any profession or business the surest way of growing rich.

No such thing as a man willing to be honest—that would he like a blind man willing to see.

Fie that resolves to deal with none but honest men must leave off dealing.