Quotes to inspire and reflect

I remember as a child reading or hearing the words “The Great Divide” and being stunned by the glorious sound, a proper sound for the granite backbone of a continent. I saw in my mind escarpments rising into the clouds, a kind of natural Great Wall of China.

We Germans fear God, but nothing else in the world.

Anyone can be heroic from time to time, but a gentleman is something you have to be all the time. Which isn't easy.

Fair and softly goes far.

Repose and cheerfulness are the badge of the gentleman,—repose in energy.

The difference between Talent and Genius is, that Talent says things which he has never heard but once, and Genius things which he has never heard.

Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer.

It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.

The deep waters of time will flow over us: only a few men of genius will lift a head above the surface, and though doomed eventually to pass into the same silence, will fight against oblivion and for a long time hold their own.

Genius has never been accepted without a measure of condonement.

The concept of genius as akin to madness has been carefully fostered by the inferiority complex of the public.

Men of genius are far more abundant than is supposed. In fact, to appreciate thoroughly the work of what we call genius, is to possess all the genius by which the work was produced.

Better beware of notions like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic wand and should be used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things clearly.

There are two types of genius: one which above all begets and wants to beget, and another which prefers being fertilized and giving birth.

The genius—in work and in deed—is necessarily a squanderer: the fact that he spends himself constitutes his greatness.

Genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom.

Genius is a native to the soil where it grows—is fed by the air, and warmed by the sun; and is not a hothouse plant or an exotic.

The definition of genius is that it acts unconsciously; and those who have produced immortal works have done so without knowing how or why.

He whose genius appears deepest and truest excels his fellows in nothing save the knack of expression; he throws out occasionally a lucky hint at truths of which every human soul is profoundly though unutterably conscious.

Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for having large feet. What wonder that later in life it should be inclined to raise those feet too swiftly to fools and bores.

The young man reveres men of genius, because, to speak truly, they are more himself than he is.

Genius seems to consist merely in trueness of sight, in using such words as show that the man was an eye-witness, and not a repeater of what was told.

Sensibility alters from generation to generation in everybody, whether we will or no; but expression is only altered by a man of genius.

Genius always finds itself a century too early.

Patience is a necessary ingredient of genius.

Never imitate the eccentricities of genius, but toil after it in its truer flights. They are not so easy to follow, but they lead to higher regions.

Genius is sorrow’s child.

Discretion is deadly to genius; ruinous to talent.

Generosity is the flower of justice.

Of all virtues, magnanimity is the rarest. There are a hundred persons of merit for one who willingly acknowledges it in another.

We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow; / Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so.

Nothing so dates a man as to decry the younger generation.

In a brief space the generations of living beings are changed and like runners pass on the torches of life.

Our strife pertains to ourselves—to the passing generations of men—and it can without convulsion be hushed forever with the passing of one generation.

Every old man complains of the growing depravity of the world, of the petulance and insolence of the rising generation.

Like leaves on trees the race of man is found,— / Now green in youth, now withering on the ground; / Another race the following spring supplies: / They fall successive, and successive rise.

Amongst democratic nations, each new generation is a new people.

Intellectual generalities are always interesting, but generalities in morals mean absolutely nothing.

The cause of all human evils is the not being able to apply general principles to special cases.

It is a great misfortune not to possess sufficient wit to speak well, nor sufficient judgment to keep silent.

God may forgive sins, but awkwardness has no forgiveness in heaven or earth.

A weed is no more than a flower in disguise, / Which is seen through at once, if love give a man eyes.

Cards are war, in disguise of a sport.

Adventure upon all the tickets in the lottery, and you lose for certain; and the greater the number of your tickets the nearer you approach to this certainty.

Gambling is the great leveller. All men are equal— at cards.

[H]e was like a man who stands upon a hill above the town he has left, yet does not say “The town is near,” but turns his eyes upon the distant soaring ranges.

The future has waited long enough; if we do not grasp it, other hands, grasping hard and bloody, will.

The future is too interesting and dangerous to be entrusted to any predictable, reliable agency. We need all the fallibility we can get. Most of all, we need to preserve the absolute unpredictability and total improbability of our connected minds.