Quotes to inspire and reflect

God is good, there is no devil but fear.

Evil is uncertain in the same degree as good, and for the reason that we ought not to hope too securely, we ought not to fear with too much dejection.

After seven days at sea, thirst is a feeling unto itself; it’s a deep pain in the throat, in the sternum, and especially beneath the clavicles. And it’s also the fear of suffocating.

He that fears you present will hate you absent.

Fear is an instructor of great sagacity and the herald of all revolutions.

I suddenly remember something I’ve been told about fear. That amid a hail of machine gun fire you notice the existence of your skin.

How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat?

It all goes back to those German existentialists who tell you how good dread is for you, how it saves you from distraction and gives you your freedom and makes you authentic. God is no more. But Death is.

None of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.

The faultfinder will find faults even in paradise.

Whatever folly men commit, be their shortcomings or their vices what they may, let us exercise forbearance; remember that when these faults appear in others it is our follies and vices that we behold.

Whoe’er he be / That tells my faults, I hate him mortally.

Our shortcomings are the eyes with which we see the ideal.

Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still greater evil to he full of them, and to be unwilling to recognize them.

There exists scarcely any man so accomplished, or so necessary to his own family, but he has some failing which will diminish their regret at his loss.

The defects of human nature afford us opportunities of exercising our philosophy, the best employment of our virtues. If all men were righteous, all hearts true and frank and loyal, what use would our virtues be?

It is too bad how thoughtlessly we set up harsh and unkind rules against ourselves. No one is born without faults. That man is best who has fewest.

It is well that there is no one without a fault; for he would not have a friend in the world.

A benevolent man should allow a few faults in himself, to keep his friends in countenance.

Those see nothing but faults that seek for nothing else.

Worse / than a true evil is it to bear the burden of faults that are not truly yours.

A man must thank his defects, and stand in some terror of his talents.

Our faults are not seen, / But past us; neither felt, but only in / The punishment.

The real fault is to have faults and not to amend them.

It is easier to confess a defect than to claim a quality.

The strongest have their moments of fatigue.

In the morning a man walks with his whole body; in the evening, only with his legs.

Luck or tragedy, some people get runs. Then of course there are those who divide it even, good and bad, but we never hear of them. Such a life doesn’t demand attention. Only the people who get the good or bad runs.

Fate has terrible power. / You cannot escape it by wealth or war. / No fort will keep it out, no ships outrun it.

Fate leads the willing, and drags along the reluctant.

See how the Fates their gifts allot, / For A is happy-—B is not. / Yet B is worthy, I dare say, / Of more prosperity than A.

Even-handed fate / Hath but one law for small and great: / That ample urn holds all men’s names.

Superiority to Fate / Is difficult to gain / ’Tis not conferred of Any / But possible to earn.

Necessity is harsh. / Fate has no reprieve.

Whatsoe’er we perpetrate, / We do but row, we are steered by fate.

A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.

New customs, / Though they be never so ridiculous / (Nay, let ’em be unmanly), yet are followed.

Fashions, after all, are only induced epidemics.

The present fashion is always handsome.

Fashion is the abortive issue of vain ostentation and exclusive egotism: it is haughty, trifling, affected, servile, despotic, mean and ambitious, precise and fantastical, all in a breath—tied to no rule, and bound to conform to every whim of the minute.

Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.

He is only fantastical that is not in fashion.

It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail.

Fashion, n. A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey.

Remote though your farm may be, / It’s something to be the lord of one green lizard—and free.

The largest single step in the ascent of man is the change from nomad to village agriculture.

The dreamer can know no truth, not even about his dream, except by awaking out of it.

Life moves out of a red flare of dreams / Into a common light of common hours, / Until old age brings the red flare again.