Quotes to inspire and reflect

By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man’s, I mean.

One becomes moral as soon as one is unhappy.

Many people genuinely do not want to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings.

There are few who would not rather be taken in adultery than in provincialism.

All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil, show it to be evidently a great evil. You never find people labouring to convince you that you may live very happily upon a plentiful fortune.

A very rich person should leave his kids enough to do anything but not enough to do nothing.

They do not easily rise out of obscurity whose talents straitened circumstances obstruct at home.

Happy the man who, far away from business, like the race of men of old, tills his ancestral fields with his own oxen, unbound by any interest to pay.

Men seem neither to understand their riches nor their strength. Of the former they believe greater things than they should; of the latter, less.

A propensity to hope and joy is real riches; one to fear and sorrow, real poverty.

I admit it is better fun to punt than to be punted, and that a desire to have all the fun is nine-tenths of the law of chivalry.

Even he who is wiser than the wise may err.

The heart of man is very much like the sea, it has its storms, it has its tides and in its depths it has its pearls too.

Civilisations should be measured by the degree of diversity attained and the degree of unity retained.

We’re all of us guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

Love, hope, fear, faith — these make humanity; these are its sign and note and character.

I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.

Everything mankind does, their hope, fear, rage, pleasure, joys, business, are the hotch-potch of my little book.

Humanity I love you because when you’re hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink.

If [human life] depends on anything, it is on this frail cord, flung from the forgotten hills of yesterday to the invisible mountains of tomorrow.

The roaring of the wind is my wife and the stars through the window pane are my children.

And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare

If love is the best thing in life, then the best part of love is the kiss.

If you cannot have your dear husband for a comfort and a delight, for a breadwinner and a crosspatch, for a sofa, chair, or a hot-water bottle, one can use him as a cross to be borne.

The things that we love tell us what we are.

When one has once fully entered the realm of love, the world — no matter how imperfect — becomes rich and beautiful, it consists solely of opportunities for love.

You should have a softer pillow than my heart.

Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such who are in the institution wish to get out; and such as are out wish to get in.

Most people experience love, without noticing that there is anything remarkable about it.

The trouble with marriage is that it ends every night after making love, and it must be rebuilt every morning before breakfast.

If the world were good for nothing else, it is a fine subject for speculation.

Variety’s the very spice of life, that gives it all its flavour.

This hobble of being alive is rather serious, don’t you think so?

I know that’s a secret, for it’s whispered everywhere.

Life is an unanswered question, but let’s still believe in the dignity and importance of the question.

We would all be idle if we could.

Most of what matters in your life takes place in your absence.

You will put on a dress of guilt and shoes with broken high ideals.

Life is too much like a pathless wood where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs broken across it, and one eye is weeping from a twig’s having lashed across it open.

You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks.

We can’t all be happy, we can’t all be rich, we can’t all be lucky … Some must cry so that others may be able to laugh the more heartily.

Oh, isn’t life a terrible thing, thank God?

The led must not be compelled, they must be able to choose their own leader.

One is never as unhappy as one thinks, nor as happy as one hopes.

It is better for a leader to make a mistake in forgiving than to make a mistake in punishing.

It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data.

It is often said that second thoughts are best. So they are in matters of judgment but not in matters of conscience.

Don’t judge a man by his opinions, but what his opinions have made of him.