Quotes to inspire and reflect

The wit of conversation consists more in finding it in others than in showing a great deal yourself.

The present is the point at which time touches eternity.

 

Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its shortness.

“Tell me what you read and I’ll tell you who you are” is true enough, but I’d know you better if you told me what you reread.

It is easy enough to hold an opinion, but hard work to actually know what one is talking about.

 

I make the most of all that comes and the least of all that goes.

 

Why doesn’t the fellow who says “I’m no speechmaker” let it go at that instead of giving a demonstration?

Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny.

The safest road to hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.

 

Come good times or bad, there is always a market for things nobody needs.

It is only our bad temper that we put down to being tired or worried or hungry; we put our good temper down to ourselves.

 

Life is short and we never have enough time for gladdening the hearts of those who travel the way with us. Oh, be swift to love! Make haste to be kind.

Forgiving and being forgiven are two names for the same thing. The important thing is that a discord has been resolved.

We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.

 

We’d all like to vote for the best man, but he’s never a candidate.

Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.

Power is the most persuasive rhetoric.

Facts were never pleasing to him. He acquired them with reluctance and got rid of them with relief. He was never on terms with them until he had stood them on their heads.

A modest garden . . . contains, for those who know how to look and to wait, more instruction than a library.

I’ve dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas: they’ve gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind.

To know how to grow old is the masterwork of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.

for it means pushing back a boundary-line and adding to one’s liberty.

I think there is no suffering greater than what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe.

The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides.

The greater part of the truth is always hidden, in regions out of the reach of cynicism.

What about the creative state? In it a man is taken out of himself. He lets down as it were a bucket into his subconscious and draws up something which is normally beyond his reach.

The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them.

We wear the cape of civilization But our souls live in the stone age.

For words, like Nature, half reveal And half conceal the Soul within.

Destiny has two ways of crushing us— by refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them.

Man cannot live without some vision of himself. But still less can he live with a vision that is not true to his inner experience and inner feeling.

Virtue must shape itself in deed.

We are all visionaries, and what we see is our soul in things.

To be misunderstood even by those whom one loves is the cross and bitterness of life.

An error is the more dangerous in proportion to the degree of truth which it contains.

People get wisdom from thinking, not from learning.

One should stick by one’s own soul, and by nothing else. In one’s soul, one knows the truth from the untruth, and life from death. And if one betrays one’s own soul-knowledge, one is the worst of traitors.

To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent. To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius.

Technology . . . is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other.

You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering.

And if tonight my soul may find her peace In sleep, and sink in good oblivion, And in the morning wake like a new-opened flower Then I have been dipped again in God, and new-created.

Sin is a queer thing. It isn’t the breaking of divine commandments. It is the breaking of one’s own integrity.

I never saw a wild thing Sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough Without ever having felt sorry for itself.

The center of the universe is still the self.

And what’s romance? Usually, a nice little tale where you have everything As You Like It, where rain never wets your jacket and gnats never bite your nose and it’s always daisy-time.

The living self has one purpose only: to come into its own fullness of being, as a tree comes into full blossom, or a bird into spring beauty, or a tiger into luster.

To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art.

Deep meaning oft lies hid in childish play.