Quotes to inspire and reflect

It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.

There is no one, no matter how wise he is, who has not in his youth said things or done things that are so unpleasant to recall in later life that he would expunge them entirely from his memory if that were possible.

What a time experiences as evil, is usually an untimely echo of what was formerly experienced as good--the atavism of a more ancient ideal.

I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious idea of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God. Thomas A.

If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence.

All men are in some degree impressed by the face of the world; some men even to delight. This love of beauty is taste. Others have the same love in such success that, not content with admiring, they seek to embody it in new forms. The creation of beauty is art.

To believe is to know you believe, and to know you believe is not to believe.

Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.

If people never did silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.

Art is science made clear.

The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.

The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.

To be blind is bad, but worse is to have eyes and not see.

Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.

You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

The very essence of literature is the war between emotion and intellect, between life and death. When literature becomes too intellectual -- when it begins to ignore the passions, the motions -- it becomes sterile, silly, and actually without substance.

About foxhunting: The unspeakable chasing the uneatable.

Music expresses that which cannot remain silent and that which cannot be put into words.

The personal, if it is deep enough, becomes universal, mythical, symbolic.

If God had wanted us to think just with our wombs, why did He give us a brain?

All that is really necessary for survival of the fittest, it seems, is an interest in life, good, bad, or peculiar.

I am the only truth I know.

Once conform, once do what other people do because they do it, and a lethargy steals over all the finer nerves and faculties of the soul.

He who is sorrowful can force himself to smile, but he who is glad cannot weep.

Grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear.

We just find our duties in what comes to us, not in what might have been.

Self-esteem is something you have to earn! The only way to achieve self-esteem is to work hard. People have an obligation to live up to their potential.

If the belief [in Christianity] did not make us happy, it would not be believed: how little it must then be worth!

Every small, positive change we make in ourselves repays us in confidence in the future.

Fail, fail again, fail better.

The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life.

Sane and intelligent human beings are like all other human beings, and carefully and cautiously and diligently conceal their private real opinions from the world and give out fictitious ones in their stead for general consumption.

One should guard against preaching to young people success in the customary form as the main aim in life. The most important motive for work in school and in life is pleasure in work, pleasure in its result, and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community.

A man who works beyond the surface of things, though he may be wrong himself, yet he clears the way for others and may make even his errors subservient to the cause of truth.

So long as there are men there will be wars.

Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.

Imitation is suicide.

If you want to endure life, prepare yourself for death.

The only excuse for creating something useless is that one admires it intensely.

If Love be rough with you, be rough with Love, prick Love for pricking, and you beat Love down.

The fool wonders, the wise man asks.

Perfection is the enemy of the good.

I know three things will never be believed-the true, the probable, and the logical.

I knew I belonged to the public and to the world, not because I was talented or even beautiful, but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else.

When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.

You are free, and that is why you are lost.

Hobbies cost money but interests are free.

Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.