Quotes to inspire and reflect

I am one of those who believe that spiritual progress is a rule of human life, but the approach to perfection is slow and painful. If a woman elevates herself in one respect and is retarded in another, it is because the rough trail that leads to the mountain peak is not free of ambushes of thieves and lairs of wolves.

Scent is the soul of flowers, and sea flowers, as splendid as they may be, have no soul!

How tranquil is a coral tomb, and may the heavens grant that my companions and I be buried in no other!

When books are burned in the end people will be burned too.

Never lend books - nobody ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are those which people have lent me.

When the destroyer comes, his first act will be to destroy all the books.

There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.

For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure.

Trade-offs have been with us ever since the late unpleasantness in the Garden of Eden.

I do not know everything; still many things I understand.

Not that you lied to me, but that I no longer believe you, has shaken me.

Human beings cannot stand too much reality. Thomas S.

Why should I do anything for posterity? What has posterity ever done for me?

In a minute there is time for decision and revisions that a minute will reverse. T. S.

I meant to write about death, only life came breaking in as usual.

I read part of it all the way through.

I cannot call to mind a single instance where I have ever been irreverent, except toward the things which were sacred to other people.

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself; neither do we rejoice therein, because we control our lusts, but contrariwise, because we rejoice therein, we are able to control our lusts.

Woe be to him that reads but one book.

The mind has greater power over the emotions, and is less subject thereto, insofar as it understands all things to be necessary.

He who loves God cannot endeavor that God should love him in return.

A love of tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril; but the new view must come, the world must roll forward.

If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.

People who count their chickens before they are hatched, act very wisely, because chickens run about so absurdly that it is impossible to count them accurately.

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

Europe will never be like America. Europe is a product of history. America is a product of philosophy.

I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a Radical to remove all that is bad. I seek to preserve property and to respect order, and I equally decry the appeal to the passions of the many or the prejudices of the few.

America is a young country with an old mentality.

I see America, not in the setting sun of a black night of despair ahead of us, I see America in the crimson light of a rising sun fresh from the burning, creative hand of God. I see great days ahead, great days possible to men and women of will and vision.

Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.

I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.

It is, I think, an indisputable fact that Americans are, as Americans, the most self- conscious people in the world, and the most addicted to the belief that the other nations are in a conspiracy to under-value them.

The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way.

The people of the United States, perhaps more than any other nation in history, love to abase themselves and proclaim their unworthiness, and seem to find refreshment in doing so... That is a dark frivolity, but still frivolity.

For a significant man woman, the one thought he values greatly, to the laughter and scorn of insignificant men, is a key to hidden treasure chambers; for those others, it is nothing but a piece of old iron.

No one should drive a hard bargain with an artist.

The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.

To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.

Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn. C. S. Lewis #10095 If you would be loved, love and be lovable.

Knowledge is love and light and vision.

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience by which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, "I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.

Our character...is an omen of our destiny, and the more integrity we have and keep, the simpler and nobler that destiny is likely to be.

For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.

It is better to have done something than to have been someone.

There is nothing like dream to create the future. Utopia to-day, flesh and blood tomorrow.

No sadder proof can be given by man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.

A little bad taste is like a nice dash of paprika.

We find that after years of struggle we do not take a journey, but rather a journey takes us.