Quotes to inspire and reflect

There is scarcely a single man clever enough to know all the evil he does.

Whenever I’m caught between two evils, I take the one I’ve never tried.

Whatever is the first time persons hear evil, it is quite certain that good has been beforehand with them, and they have a something within them which tells them it is evil.

If a thing be really good, it can be shown to be such.

Better is the enemy of good.

Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvellous, intoxicating.

To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.

Good, the more communicated, more abundant grows.

From quiet homes and first beginning,

What we call evil is simply ignorance bumping its head in the dark.

One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.

It is the worst solitude, to have no true friendships.

Antipathy: The sentiment inspired by one’s friend’s friend.

My true friends have always given me that supreme proof of devotion, a spontaneous aversion for the man I loved.

I cannot and will not give any undertaking at a time when I, and you, the people, are not free. Your freedom and mine cannot be separated.

Liberty was born in England from the quarrels of tyrants.

A man able to think isn’t defeated — even when he is defeated.

Was there ever in anyone’s life span a point free in time, devoid of memory, a night when choice was any more than the sum of all the choices gone before?

No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.

Whatever strengthens and purifies the affections, enlarges the imagination, and adds spirit to sense, is useful.

I don’t like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn’t of much value. Life hasn’t revealed its beauty to them.

Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced; even a proverb is no proverb to you till your life has illustrated it.

What we learn in a time of pestilence: that there are more things to admire in men than to despise.

How seldom is it that theories stand the wear and tear of practice!

I know a man that had this trick of melancholy sold a goodly manor for a song.

As we all know from witnessing the consuming jealousy of husbands who are never faithful, people do not confine themselves to the emotions to which they are entitled.

The threshold of a new house is a lonely place.

Indeed, revenge is always the pleasure of a paltry, feeble, tiny mind.

It is very difficult to get up resentment towards persons whom one has never seen.

It is in man’s heart that the life of nature’s spectacle exists; to see it, one must feel it.

To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil’s soul. To Miss Mackay it is a putting in of something that is not there, and that is not what I call education. I call it intrusion.

To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education.

Even when walking in the company of two other men, I am bound to be able to learn from them. The good points of one I copy; the bad points of the other I correct in myself.

We may not be able to prepare the future for our children, but we can at least prepare our children for the future.

No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.

Generous people make bad shopkeepers .

The business man, in fact, acquiesces in this assumption of his inferiority, even when he protests against it. He is the only man who is forever apologising for his occupation.

Excise: a hateful tax levied upon commodities.

Though they go mad they shall be sane,

[Commercialism is] doing well that which should not be done at all.

You may my glories and my state depose

I mount! I fly!

Sorrow and silence are strong, and patient endurance is godlike.

Death is no different whined at than withstood.

The excellency of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate.

A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.

The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful; one must sense him everywhere but never see him.

Life being all inclusion and confusion, and art being all discrimination and selection.