Quotes to inspire and reflect

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.

Once I thought that Lake Forest was the most glamorous place in the world. Maybe it was.

Disillusion can become itself an illusion / If we rest in it.

The proof that a philosopher does not know what he is talking about is apt to sadden his followers before it reacts on himself.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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