Quotes to inspire and reflect

About foxhunting: The unspeakable chasing the uneatable.

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?

I am the only truth I know.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

So long as there are men there will be wars.

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

Imitation is suicide.

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

Perfection is the enemy of the good.

The fool wonders, the wise man asks.

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

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

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.

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

Hobbies cost money but interests are free.

All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.

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.

Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.

We shall not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire...Give us the tools and we will finish the job.

We shall show mercy, but we shall not ask for it.

When there are monsters there are miracles.

We shall support whatever the enemy opposes and oppose whatever the enemy supports.

Wise men have more to learn of fools than fools of wise men.

It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinions than our own.

Tell me where I can escape death: discover for me the country, show me the men to whom I must go, whom death does not visit. Discover to me a charm against death. If I have not one, what do you wish me to do? I cannot escape from death, but shall I die lamenting and trembling? . . . Therefore, if I am able to change externals according to my wish, I change them: but if I cannot, I am ready to tear the eyes out of him who hinders me.

Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen.

Every mile is two in winter.

The world is a great book; he who never stirs from home reads only a page.

When a traveler returned home, let him not leave the countries where he hath travelled altogether behind him.

He saw that it was an ironical thing for him to be running thus toward that which he had been at such pains to avoid. But he said, in substance, to himself that if the earth and the moon were about to clash, many people would doubtless plan to get upon the roofs to witness the collision.

Loving is misery for women always. I shall never forgive God for making me a woman and dearly am I beginning to pay for the honour of owning a pretty face.

When thou seest an eagle, thou seest a portion of genius; lift up thy head!

I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven.

I have a hundred times wished that one could resign life as an officer resigns a commission.