Quotes to inspire and reflect

The saving grace of all really great gifts is that the persons who bear their burden remain superior to what they have done, at least as long as the source of creativity is alive.

A man has made great progress in cunning when he does not seem too clever to others.

Let us be wary of ready-made ideas about cowardice and courage: the same burden weighs infinitely more heavily on some shoulders than on others.

No man gains credit for his cowardly courtesies.

There was no room in God’s army for the coward heart, no crown awaiting him who put mother or father, sister or brother, sweetheart or friend above God’s will. Let the church cry amen to this!

Cowards never use their might, / But against such as will not fight.

This swift business / I must uneasy make, lest too light winning / Make the prize light.

When once the young heart of a maiden is stolen, / The maiden herself will steal after it soon.

Do not let any sweet-talking woman beguile your good sense / with the fascinations of her shape. It’s your barn she’s after.

Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless thy win along with it the utmost passion of her heart!

The knowledge of courtesy and good manners is a very necessary study. It is, like grace and beauty, that which begets liking and an inclination to love one another at the first sight.

A man running after a hat is not half so ridiculous as a man running after a wife.

Courtesy is the politic witchery of great personages.

All doors open to courtesy.

Courtesy is the due of man to man; not of suit-of- clothes to suit-of-clothes.

We must be as courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear-not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave.

The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance, and never to keep his word.

It is courage, courage, courage, that raises the blood of life to crimson splendor.

They are surely to be esteemed the bravest spirits who, having the clearest sense of both the pains and pleasures of life, do not on that account shrink from danger.

That is at bottom the only courage demanded of us: to have courage for the most strange, the most singular and the most inexplicable that we may encounter.

Valor is a gift. Those having it never know for sure whether they have it till the test comes. And those having it in one test never know for sure if they will have it when the next test comes.

Everyone becomes brave when he observes one who despairs.

That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem to be, or to be, when it suits him, a coward.

Between cowardice and despair, valour is gendred.

There are few men who know how to go to their deaths with dignity, and often they are not those whom one would expect.

All bravery stands upon comparisons.

Valour lies just half way between rashness and cowheartedness.

A man must be of a very quiet and happy nature, who can long endure the country; and, moreover, very well contented with his own insignificant person.

Why one day in the country / Is worth a month in town; / Is worth a day and a year / Of the dusty, musty, lag-last fashion / That days drone elsewhere.

A man’s soul may be buried and perish under a dungheap or in a furrow of the field, just as well as under a pile of money.

Nor rural sights alone, but rural sounds, / Exhilarate the spirit, and restore / The tone of languid Nature.

I want a horse and plough,/Chickens too,/Just one cow,/With a wistful moo.

Most women are not so young as they are painted.

There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.

Corruption wins not more than honesty.

The corruption of every government begins nearly always with that of principles.

The corruption of the age is made up by the particular contribution of every individual man; some contribute treachery, others injustice, irreligion, tyranny, avarice, cruelty, according to their power.

A good cook is a certain slow poisoner, if you are not temperate.

No man is worthy of unlimited reliance—his treason, at best, only waits for sufficient temptation.

Bad cooks—and the utter lack of reason in the kitchem—have delayed human development longest and impaired it most.

Cookery has become an art, a noble science; cooks are gentlemen.

Is there anything more terrible than a “call”? It affords an occasion for the exchange of the most threadbare commonplaces. Calls and the theatre are the two great centers for the propagation of platitudes.

The necessity of saying something, the embarrassment produced by the consciousness of having nothing to say, and the desire to exhibit ability, are three things sufficient to render even a great man ridiculous.

True conversation is an interpenetration of worlds, a genuine intercourse of souls, which doesn’t have to be self-consciously profound but does have to touch matters of concern to the soul.

Wit in conversation is only a readiness of thought and a facility of expression, or (in the midwives’ phrase) a quick conception, and an easy delivery.

For table-talk, 1 prefer the pleasant and witty before the learned and the grave; in bed, beauty before goodness.

We do not talk—we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests.