Quotes to inspire and reflect

For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach.

Courage is found in unlikely places.

Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself.

The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That's the deal.

There is a general prejudice to the effect that lawyers are more honorable then politicians but less honorable than prostitutes. That is an exaggeration.

French is the language that turns dirt into romance.

Well, I don't know as I want a lawyer to tell me what I cannot do. I hire him to tell how to do what I want to do.

Opera does not call so much for an imaginative ear as for an imaginative eye, an eye which can see beyond little absurdities toward great truths.

If you cannot teach me to fly, teach me to sing.

The basic essential of a great actor is that he loves himself in acting.

Movies are a fad. Audiences really want to see live actors on a stage.

It is strange how often a heart must be broken before the years can make it wise.

The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius.

The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool.

Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.

Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence.

If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.

If no set of moral ideas were truer or better than any other, there would be no sense in preferring civilized morality to savage morality.

Dreams do come true, if we only wish hard enough. You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it.

Think of the long view of life, not just what's going to happen today or tomorrow. Don't give up what you most want in life for something you think you want now.

One can’t prove that God doesn’t exist, but science makes God unnecessary.

He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.

Women still remember the first kiss after men have forgotten the last.

Women wish to be loved without a why or a wherefore; not because they are pretty, or good, or well-bred, or graceful, or intelligent, but because they are themselves.

Any fool knows men and women think differently at times, but the biggest difference is this. Men forget, but never forgive; women forgive, but never forget.

Men forget but never forgive. Women forgive but never forget.

Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men.

If war is ever lawful, then peace is sometimes sinful.

In wars, boy, fools kill other fools for foolish causes.

If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning .

The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.

Economics is the painful elaboration of the obvious.

For it is in giving that we receive.

The most wasted day of all is that in which we have not laughed.

Charm is the quality in others that makes us more satisfied with ourselves.

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.

No one worth possessing can be quite possessed.

A glimpse is not a vision. But to a man on a mountain road by night, a glimpse of the next three feet of road may matter more than a vision of the horizon.

Only a fool thinks price and value are the same.

Now and then an innocent man is sent to the legislature.

The cause of freedom, of the defense of man’s conscience, is indivisible. By defending it in one country, we defend it everywhere in the world.

There are those who will say that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is the American dream.

 

We haven’t got too much time left to ensure that government of the earth, by the earth, for the earth, shall not perish from the people.

The Pyramids will not last a moment compared with the daisy.

 

There’s no secret about success. Did you ever know a successful man who didn’t tell you about it?

I never knew how soothing trees are—many trees and patches of open sunlight, and tree presences; it is almost like having another being.

Hope smiles on the threshold of the year to come, whispering that it will be happier.