Quotes to inspire and reflect

Trouble has no necessary connection with discouragement—discouragement has a germ of its own, as different from trouble as arthritis is different from a stiff joint.

Not merely the idols fell, but also the habit of faith.

Civil dissension is a viperous worm / That gnaws the bowels of the commonwealth.

What sets men at variance is but the treachery of language, for always they desire the same things.

All men who reflect on controversial matters should be free from hatred, friendship, anger, and pity.

The unity of freedom has never relied on uniformity of opinion.

It is a difficult matter for man to realize the extreme importance of social discriminations which seem outwardly insignificant but which produce in woman moral and intellectual effects so profound that they appear to spring from her original nature.

Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.

A good salad may be the prologue to a bad supper.

He who requires much from himself and little from others, will keep himself from being the object of resentment.

There are three species of creatures who when they seem coming are going, / When they seem going they come: Diplomats, women, and crabs.

Lofty words cannot construct an alliance or maintain it; only concrete deeds can do that.

What could be more essential in a pluralistic society like ours than that every citizen see dignity in every other human being everywhere?

Consul, n. In American politics, a person who having failed to secure an office from the people is given one by the Administration on condition that he leave the country.

What is dignity without honesty?

In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us.

If at times our actions seem to make life difficult for others, it is only because history has made life difficult for us all.

I walk firmer and more secure up hill than down.

Of course, one dictionary is as good as another to most people, who use them for spellers and bet-settlers and accessories to crossword puzzles and Scrabble games.

Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.

We may not pay Satan reverence, for that would be indiscreet, but we can at least respect his talents.

Neither is a dictionary a bad book to read. There is no cant in it, no excess of explanation, and it is full of suggestion,—the raw material of possible poems and histories.

A person [Satan] who has during all time maintained the imposing position of spiritual head of four- fifths of the human race, and political head of the whole of it, must be granted the possession of executive abilities of the loftiest order.

God seeks comrades and claims love, / the Devil seeks slaves and claims obedience.

Sometimes / The Devil is a gentleman.

One is always wrong to open a conversation with the devil, for, however he goes about it, he always insists upon having the last word.

It's a sort of curious phenomenon that God is somehow not quite as nice as the devil; the devil doesn’t punish you for behaving well, but God punishes you for behaving badly.

The Earth has killed itself. It is black, petrified, wizened, poisoned, burst; insanity has blown it rotten; and no creatures at all, joyful, despairing, cruel, kind, dumb, afire, loving, dull, shortly and brutishly hunt their days down like enemies on that corrupted face.

To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior “righteous indignation”—this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.

Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by his example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.

One minute gives invention to destroy; / What to rebuild, will a whole age employ.

There is nothing we value and hunt and cultivate and strive to draw to us, but in some hour we turn and rend it.

Whatever God has brought about / Is to be borne with courage.

All destruction, by violent revolution or however it be, is but new creation on a wider scale.

How easy ’tis, when Destiny proves kind, / With full-spread sails to run before the wind!

If thou follow thy star, thou canst not fail of glorious heaven.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats.

If clearness about things produces a fundamental despair, a fundamental despair in turn produces a remarkable clearness or even playfulness about ordinary matters.

Safe Despair it is that raves— / Agony is frugal. / Puts itself severe away / For its own perusal.

Try the Lamentations of Jeremiah. They always pick me up.

The superiority of the distant over the present is only due to the mass and variety of the pleasures that can be suggested, compared with the poverty of those that can at any time be felt.

The ordinary life of men is like that of the saints. They all seek their satisfaction, and differ only in the object in which they place it; they call those their enemies who hinder them.

Desire projected itself visually: his fancy, not quite yet lulled since morning, imaged the marvels and terrors of the manifold earth.

Granting our wish one of Fate’s saddest jokes is!

There are certain people who so ardently and passionately desire a thing, that from dread of losing it they leave nothing undone to make them lose it.

Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion, and he whose real wants are supplied must admit those of fancy.

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.

It would not be better if things happened to men just as they wish.