Quotes to inspire and reflect

Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.

Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs, Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes, Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers’ tears. What is it else? A madness most discreet, A choking gall and a preserving sweet.

When I consider the small span of my life absorbed in the eternity of all time, or the small part of space which I can touch or see engulfed by the infinite immensity of spaces that I know not and that know me not, I am frightened and astonished to see myself here instead of there... now instead of then.

Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other.... The prayers of both could not be answered--that of neither has been answered fully.

A genius is just a talented person who does his homework. Thomas A.

Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.

It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thoughts or action we should remember our dying and try so to live, that our death brings no pleasure on the world.

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.

Man have to have friends even in hell.

Sometimes you cannot believe what you see, you have to believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have other people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them, too--even when you’re in the dark. Even when you’re falling.

It is not the consciousness of men that determines their beeing, but on the contrary, it is their social being that determines their consciousness.

It is not necessary for the public to know whether I am joking or whether I am serious, just as it is not necessary for me to know it myself.

Nothing feeds upon itself as liberality does.

Hatred may be engendered by good deeds as well as bad ones.

That is not dead which can eternal lie
And with strange aeons even death may die.

Some things are so completely ludicrous that a man must laugh or die. To die laughing must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths!

I have harnessed the shadows that stride from world to world to sow death and madness...

Humankind differs from the animals only by a little, and most people throw that away.

There is no harm in doubt and scepticism, for it is through these that new discoveries are made.

A man who won?t die for something is not fit to live.

The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to.

The very existence of flamethrowers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, "You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I?m just not close enough to get the job done.

[Humanity] has unquestionably one really effective weapon?laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution?these can lift at a colossal humbug?push it a little?weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.

It becomes a bore doing imaginative books that do not touch imaginations, and at length one stops even planning them. H. G. Wells, Preface of "The Complete Science-Fiction Treasury of H.G.

To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.

To each mortal peradventure earth becomes a new machine.

All created things are impermanent. Strive on with diligence.

When all you can feel are the shadows, turn your face towards the sun.

A crisis does not always appear to a policymaker as a series of dramatic events. Usually it imposes itself as an exhausting agenda of petty chores demanding both concentration and endurance.

Sundown, yellow moon, I replay the past. I know every scene by heart, they all went by so fast.

You must come to terms with your wholeself. the wholeness which exceeds all our virtue and all our vice.

[Mankind] is governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities. It suppresses its feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise. Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong, but no matter, the crowd follows it.

To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it.

I knew a man who gave up smoking, drinking, and rich food. He was healthy right up to the day he killed himself.

And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Men grow tired of sleep, love, singing and dancing, sooner than war.

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not. Thomas H.

Life is the will to power; our natural desire to dominate and reshape the world to fit our own preferences and assert our personal strength to the fullest degree.

The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is the best of all.

Major writing is to say what has been seen, so that it need never be said again.

Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.

One runs the risk of weeping a little, if one allows himself to be tamed.

You are beautiful, but you are empty. One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you--the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered.

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.

Common sense is as rare as genius.

What can we see, read, acquire, but ourselves? Take the book, my friend, and read your eyes out, you will never find there what I find.

The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.

Suffering is none the less acute and much more lasting when it is put into words.