Quotes to inspire and reflect

I muse with the greatest affection on every flower I have known from my infancy - their shapes and colours are as new to me as if I had just created them with a superhuman fancy - It is because they are connected with the most thoughtless and happiest moments of our lives.

Life may change, but it may fly not;
Hope may vanish, but can die not;
Truth be veiled, but still it burneth;
Love replused - but it returneth Percy B.

What the imagination seizes as beauty must be the truth.

Opinions are made to be changed - or how is the truth to be got at.

In the desert a fountain is springing,
In the wide waste there still is a tree,
And a bird in the solitude singing,
Which speaks to my spirit of thee.

People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.

There is neither happiness nor unhappiness in this world; there is only the comparison of one state with another. Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss. It is necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good life is to live.

Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.

Only free men can negotiate; prisoners cannot enter into contracts. Your freedom and mine cannot be separated.

There is nothing training cannot do. Nothing is above its reach. It can turn bad morals to good; it can destroy bad principles and recreate good ones; it can lift men to angelship.

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Be comforted, dear soul! There is always light behind the clouds.

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces up, and snow is exhilarating; there is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.

Reason can never be popular. Passions and feelings may become popular, but reason will always remain the sole property of a few eminent individuals.

Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny.

The crisis of today is the joke of tomorrow. H. G.

There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.

Be still sad heart and cease repining;
Behind the clouds the sun is shining,
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life a little rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.

He is not laughed at who laughs at himself first.

In this world no one rules by love; if you are but amiable, you are no hero; to be powerful, you must be strong, and to have dominion you must have a genius for organizing.

A smile is a curve that sets everything straight.

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship; and it is by far the best ending for one.

No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad.

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

I confess I do not know why, but looking at the stars always makes me dream.

You can evade life, but you can not evade Death. T. S.

History knows no resting places and no plateaus.

He who is dying of hunger must be fed rather than taught.

He who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself.

Hate the sin, love the sinner.

Government can easily exist without laws, but law cannot exist without government.

God has always been hard on the poor.

God made Truth with many doors to welcome every believer who knocks on them.

God enters by a private door into every individual.

God gives to every man virtue, temper, and understanding.

Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information.

Glass, china and reputation are easily cracked, and never well mended.

Genius is born--not paid.

Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile!

Freedom is one of the deepest and noblest aspirations of the human spirit.

Gardens are not made by sitting in the shade.

Fate rules the affairs of mankind with no recognizable order.

For prayer is nothing else than being on terms of friendship with God.

False enchantment can last a lifetime. W. H.

Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.

We can never tell what is in store for us.

If you suffer, thank God! -- it is a sure sign that you are alive.

Whoever despises himself still respects himself as one who despises.