Quotes to inspire and reflect

The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them.

We wear the cape of civilization But our souls live in the stone age.

Destiny has two ways of crushing us— by refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them.

Virtue must shape itself in deed.

Man cannot live without some vision of himself. But still less can he live with a vision that is not true to his inner experience and inner feeling.

An error is the more dangerous in proportion to the degree of truth which it contains.

People get wisdom from thinking, not from learning.

To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent. To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius.

Technology . . . is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other.

And if tonight my soul may find her peace In sleep, and sink in good oblivion, And in the morning wake like a new-opened flower Then I have been dipped again in God, and new-created.

You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering.

Sin is a queer thing. It isn’t the breaking of divine commandments. It is the breaking of one’s own integrity.

I never saw a wild thing Sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough Without ever having felt sorry for itself.

And what’s romance? Usually, a nice little tale where you have everything As You Like It, where rain never wets your jacket and gnats never bite your nose and it’s always daisy-time.

The center of the universe is still the self.

To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art.

The living self has one purpose only: to come into its own fullness of being, as a tree comes into full blossom, or a bird into spring beauty, or a tiger into luster.

Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains.

A great novel is a kind of conversion experience. We come away from it changed.

Though ambition in itself is a vice, yet it is often the parent of virtues.

Anger is the fluid that love bleeds when you cut it.

Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither.

One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.

I bowl so slow that if after I have delivered the ball I don’t like the look of it, I can run after it and bring it back.

It’s the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish.

Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably.

Term, holidays, term, holidays, till we leave school, and then work, work, work till we die.

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.

ADVICE IS A DANGEROUS GIFT, EVEN FROM THE WISE TO THE WISE, AND ALL COURSES MAY RUN ILL.

One does not expect old heads on young shoulders.

A WOMAN HAS TO LIVE HER LIFE, OR LIVE TO REPENT NOT HAVING LIVED IT.

THE ROAD TO HELL IS PAVED WITH ADVERBS.

There is always a right way and a wrong way, and the wrong way always seems the more reasonable.

The safest way to double your money is to fold it over once and put it in your pocket.

No one ever forgets where he buried the hatchet.

Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.

If someone says, 'It's not the money, it's the principle,' it's the money.

Uncertainty is the refuge of hope.

Good actions get good results in time.

Life is ours to be spent, not to be saved.

Conquering any difficulty always gives one a secret joy, for it means pushing back a boundary-line and adding to one’s liberty.

Remember, we learn nothing by speaking.

Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.

Men may doubt what you say, but they will believe what you do.

He that is overcautious will accomplish little.

We are never more discontented with others than when we are discontented with ourselves.

The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes, but in liking what one has to do.

The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in which direction we are moving.