Quotes to inspire and reflect

What a grand thing, to be loved! What a grander thing still, to love!

The pleasure of love is in loving.

Politeness and consideration for others is like investing pennies and getting dollars back.

We shall find peace. We shall hear the angels; we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.

So much is a man worth as he esteems himself.

I did it partly because it was worth it, but mostly because I shall never have to do it again.

A successful lie is doubly a lie; an error which has to be corrected is a heavier burden than the truth.

Do not look back. And do not dream about the future, either. It will neither give you back the past, nor satisfy your other daydreams. Your duty, your reward- your destiny-are here and now.

A dead thing goes with the stream. Only a living thing can go against it. G. K.

Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions. G. K.

Surely your gladness need not be the less for the thought that you will one day see a brighter dawn than this - when lovelier sights will meet your eyes than any waving trees or rippling waters - when angel-hands shall undrawn your curtains, and sweeter tones than ever loving Mother breathed shall wake you to a new and glorious day - and when all the sadness, and the sin, that darkened life on this little earth, shall be forgotten like the dreams of a night that is past!

Life is not easy for any of us, but what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted in something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.

I do not believe the Union will dissolve, I believe it will become all one thing, or all the other.

Fear is a journey, a terrible journey, but sorrow is at least an arriving.

For he who sees a need but waits to be asked is already set on cruel refusal.

Human reason is by nature architectonic.

Human reason has this peculiar fate that in one species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions which, as prescribed by the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer.

Criticism alone can sever the root of materialism, fatalism, atheism, free-thinking, fanaticism, and superstition, which can be injurious universally; as well as of idealism and skepticism, which are dangerous chiefly to the Schools, and hardly allow of being handed on to the public.

The inscrutable wisdom through which we exist is not less worthy of veneration in respect to what it denies us than in respect to what it has granted.

The universal and lasting establishment of peace constitutes not merely a part, but the whole final purpose and end of the science of right as viewed within the limits of reason.

But already it is time to depart, for me to die, for you to go on living; which of us takes the better course, is concealed from anyone except God.

as to moral feeling, this supposed special sense, the appeal to it is indeed superficial when those who cannot think believe that feeling will help them out, even in what concerns general laws: and besides, feelings which naturally differ infinitely in degree cannot furnish a uniform standard of good and evil, nor has any one a right to form judgments for others by his own feelings...

Whenever, therefore, people are deceived and form opinions wide of the truth, it is clear that the error has slid into their minds through the medium of certain resemblances to that truth.

Living well and beautifully and justly are all one thing.

When desire, having rejected reason and overpowered judgment which leads to right, is set in the direction of the pleasure which beauty can inspire.

A friend is a gift you give yourself.

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.

One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar.

Love is our response to our highest values. Love is self-enjoyment. The noblest love is born out of admiration of another’s values.

Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values and finds his joy in nothing buy rational actions.

Rationality is the recognition of the fact that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence over that act of perceiving it.

Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it.

Integrity is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake your consciousness, just as honesty is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake existence.

Honesty is the recognition of the fact that the unreal is unreal and can have no value, that neither love nor fame nor cash is a value if obtained by fraud.

Words form the thread on which we string our experiences

Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of man’s values, it has to be earned.

If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.

America is the land of wide lawns and narrow minds.

The price of greatness is responsibility.

Certainly virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed: for prosperity doth best discover vice; but adversity doth best discover virtue.

What makes mankind tragic is not that they are the victims of nature, it is that they are conscious of it.

Sleep, those little slices of death, how I loathe them.

Human excellence means nothing unless it works with the consent of God.

The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.

Have no fear of perfection -- you will never reach it.

The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant.

Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad.

The conquest of the earth... is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only... not a sentimental presence but an idea.