Quotes to inspire and reflect

Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure. F.

Strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.

What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story

I was afraid that by observing objects with my eyes and trying to comprehend them with each of my other senses I might blind my soul altogether.

I have found power in the mysteries of thought.

Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance but to do what lies clearly at hand.

When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.

I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the Stern Fact, the Sad Self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.

Friends are born, not made.

She is a friend of my mind... The pieces I am, she gathers them and give them back to me in all the right order.

My friend is one... who take me for what I am.

My friends are my estate.

In summer, the song sings itself.

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.

Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better.

Happy or unhappy, families are all mysterious.

Hope is necessary in every condition.

She used to drag her mattress beside her low window and lie awake for a long while, vibrating with excitement, as a machine vibrates from speed. Life rushed in upon her through that window - or so it seemed. In reality, of course, life rushes from within, not from without. There is no work of art so big or so beautiful that is was not once all contained in some youthful body, like this one which lay on the floor in the moonlight, pulsing with ardor and anticipation.

What does it matter how one comes by the truth so long as one pounces upon it and lives by it?

Hope is only the love of life.

The truth is not simply what you think it is; it is also the circumstances in which it is said, and to whom, why and how it is said.

Truth is what stands the test of experience.

I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for the truth; and truth rewarded me.

We know truth, not only by reason, but also by the heart.

I want freedom for the full expression on my personality.

Freedom is a possession of inestimable value.

The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.

I row after health like a waterman...

In health the flesh is graced, the holy enters the world.

By health I mean the power to live a full, adult, living, breathing life in close contact with... the earth and the wonders thereof - the sea - the sun.

Regimen is superior to medicine.

happiness gives us the energy which is the basis of health.

In every bit of honest writing in the world, there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love.

At my time of life opinions are tolerably fixed. It is not likely that I should now see or hear anything to change them.

I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other.

Why comes temptation, but for man to meet and master and crouch beneath his foot, and so be pedestaled in triumph?

True greatness comes not when things go always good for you; but true greatness comes when you are really tested, when you have taken some knocks, faced some disappointments, when sadness comes. Because only if you have been in the deepest valley, can you ever know how magnificent it is to be atop the highest mountain.

There are certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing, but which are too entirely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction.

Oh, darling, let your body in, let it tie you in, in comfort.

There is but one temple in the universe and that is the body of man.

I live in company with a body, a silent companion, exacting and eternal.

Each body has its art...

The body is an instrument, the mind its function, the witness and reward of its operation.

I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate.

It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves - in finding themselves.

I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket.

I love you the more that I believe you have liked me for my own sake and for nothing else.

To be in love Is to touch with a lighter hand. In yourself you stretch, you are well.