Quotes to inspire and reflect

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Welcome is the best cheer.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hope is a great falsifier of truth.

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

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

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.

Hope is a risk that must be run.