Quotes to inspire and reflect

This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it.

Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature: these are the spur and reins whereby all mankind are set on work, and guided.

It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.

To drift is to be in hell; to be in heaven is to steer.

We are not enemies but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic cords of memory shall swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of nature.

In a free society no one can win all the time. No one can have his way all the time and no one is right all the time. Richard M.

An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.

You will always find [hatred] strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture.

A faith is a necessity to a man. Woe to him who believes in nothing.

There is nothing the body suffers which the soul may not profit by.

All for ourselves and nothing for other people seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.

Time does not always pass at the same speed. We are the ones who determine that speed.

Few take up the burden of their own victory: most give up their dreams when they become impossible.

I opened the window and my heart. The sun flooded my house and love flooded my soul.

To love is to commune with another person and to discover in him or her a divine spark.

The Lord listens to the pryers of those who ask to be able to forget hatred, but is deaf to those who want to flee love.

A warrior of light knows that he will hear an order in the silence of his heart that will guide him.

True love allows each person to follow his or her own path, aware that doing so can never drive them apart.

This is the true nature of home -- it is the place of Peace; the shelter, not only from injury, but from all terror, doubt and division.

If a rhinoceros were to enter this resteraunt now, there is no denying he would have great power here. But I would be the first to rise and assure him that he had no authority whatever. G. K.

I love these little people; and it is not a slight thing when they, who are so fresh from God, love us.

Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand to your pencil to your paper until you get the right answer.

A grand passion is the privelege of people who have nothing to do.

I must dislike those who, whatever I do to please them, persist in disliking me; I must resist those who punish me unjustly.

We have a lot of reasons but only one real one.

That which is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.

Before we acquire great power, we must acquire wisdom to use it well.

We have flown the air like birds and swum the seas like fishes, but have yet to learn the simple act of walking the earth like brothers.

...greatness sympathises with greatness, and littleness shrinks into itself.

Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.

No act terminating in itself constitutes greatness.

A really great man has always an idea of something greater than himself.

A great chessplayer is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he found it.

To impress the idea of power on others, they must be made in some way to feel it.

To display the greatest powers, unless they are applied to great purposes, makes nothing for the character of greatness.

A King (as such) is not a great man. He has great power, but it is not his own.

Popularity is neither fame nor greatness.

No man is truly great, who is great only in his life-time. The test of greatness is the page of history.

Greatness is great power, producing great effects. It is not enough that a man has great power in himself, he must shew it to all the world in a way that cannot be hid or gainsaid.

The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.

Of all the gods, Death only craves not gifts:
Nor sacrifice, nor yet drink-offering poured
Avails; no altars hath he, nor is soothed
By hymns of praise. From him alone of all
The powers of heaven Persuasion holds aloof.

That which is not just is not law.

Blessed be childhood which brings down something of heaven into the midst of our rough earthliness. Henri F.

O Death the Healer, scorn thou not, I pray,
To come to me: of cureless ills thou art
The one physician. Pain lays not its touch
Upon a corpse.

We must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.

Opinions mean nothing; they may be beautiful or ugly, clever or foolish, anyone can embrace or reject them.

I am wealthy in my friends.

I wish you all the good and charm that life can offer. Think of me kindly, and rest assured that no one would more rejoice to hear of your happiness.