Quotes to inspire and reflect

Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.

No man is above the law, and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man’s permission when we require him to obey it.

I hold it to be a proof of great prudence for men to abstain from threats and insulting words toward anyone, for neither diminishes the strength of the enemy.

Features alone do not run in the blood; vices and virtues, genius and folly, are transmitted through the same sure but unseen channel.

One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day of the year.

How pleasant it is for a father to sit at his child’s board. It is like an aged man reclining under the shadow of an oak which he has planted.

Reflect that life, like every other blessing, derives its value from its use alone.

Emotions have no place in business, unless you do business with them.

Our bravest and best lessons are not learned through success, but through misadventure.

It is impossible for men engaged in low and groveling pursuits to have noble and generous sentiments. A man’s thought must always follow his employment.

Whatever you lend let it be your money, and not your name. Money you may get again, and, if not, you may contrive to do without it; name once lost you cannot get again, and, if you cannot contrive to do without it, you had better never have been born.

Some are able and humane men and some are low-grade individuals with the morals of a goat, the artistic integrity of a slot machine and the manners of a floorwalker with delusions of grandeur.

The love of learning and the love of money rarely meet.

Learning, like money, may be of so base a coin as to be utterly void of use; or, if sterling, may require good management to make it serve the purposes of sense or happiness.

It is much better to know something about everything than to know everything about one thing.

Whether you know the shape of a pebble or the structure of a solar system, the axioms remain the same: that it exists and that you know it.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little want of knowledge is also a dangerous thing.

The worth and value of knowledge is in proportion to the worth and value of its object.

There are geniuses in trade as well as in war, or the state, or letters; and the reason why this or that man is fortunate is not to be told. It lies in the man: That is all anybody can tell you about it.

Genius is only a superior power of seeing.

Nature and education are somewhat similar. The latter transforms man, and in so doing creates a second nature.

Genius might be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way.

No state will be well administered unless the middle class holds sway.

To succeed in business, to reach the top, an individual must know all it is possible to know about that business.

He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.

The habit of reading is the only one I know in which there is no alloy. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will be there to support you when all other resources are gone. It will be present to you when the energies of your body have fallen away from you. It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live.

It is those books which a man possesses but does not read which constitute the most suspicious evidence against him.

A dollar put into a book and a book mastered might change the whole course of a boy’s life. It might easily be the beginning of the development of leadership that would carry the boy far in service to his fellow men.

A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.

Work alone does not suffice—the effort must be intelligent. That is a good book which opened with expectation and closed with profit.

Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks he is free.

In order to acquire intellect one must need it. One loses it when it is no longer necessary.

The commerce of intellect loves distant shores. The small retail dealer trades only with his neighbor; when the great merchant trades he links the four quarters of the globe.

Intelligence is not to make no mistakes, but to see quickly how to make them good.

The brave, impetuous heart yields everywhere to the subtle, contriving head.

Rest is a fine medicine. Let your stomachs rest, ye dyspeptics; let your brain rest, you wearied and worried men of business; let your limbs rest, ye children of toil!

Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.

A disease known is half cured.

Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die; and do not outlive yourself.

He will be the slave of many masters who is his body’s slave.

The human body is the magazine of inventions, the patent office, where are the models from which every hint is taken. All the tools and engines on earth are only extensions of its limbs and senses.

A feeble body weakens the mind.

A man in good health is always full of advice to the sick.

The sound body is the product of the sound mind.

How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man’s self to himself! Supreme selfishness is inculcated upon him as his only duty.

There is a certain state of health that does not allow us to understand everything; and perhaps illness shuts us off from certain truths; but health shuts us off just as effectively from others.

The trouble about always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do so without destroying the health of the mind.

We forget ourselves and our destinies in health; and the chief use of temporary sickness is to remind us of these concerns.