Quotes to inspire and reflect

I never came upon any of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking.

Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!

In the long run, you hit only what you aim at: Therefore, aim high.

Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.

Every living thing is a sort of imperialist, seeking to transform as much as possible of its environment into itself.

Life is beautiful. Life is sad.

I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite Father, expects or requires no worship or praise from us, but that He is even infinitely above it.

In these days, a man who says a thing cannot be done is quite apt to be interrupted by some idiot doing it.

True greatness consists in the use of a powerful understanding to enlighten oneself and others.

If a man cannot forget, he will never amount to much.

Our greatest natural resource is the minds of our children.

There are people who make things happen, there are people who watch things happen, and there are people who wonder what happened. To be successful, you need to be a person who makes things happen.

Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem. W.

Convinced myself, I seek not to convince.

I know this--a man got to do what he got to do.

A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her...but she can never forgive him for the sacrifices he makes on her account. W.

Do you think that the things people make fools of themselves about are any less real and true than the things they behave sensibly about? They are more true: they are the only things that are true.

Alcohol is a very necessary article... It makes life bearable to millions of people who could not endure their existence if they were quite sober. It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning.

I never resist temptation because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me.

Ah! the clock is always slow; It is later than you think.

A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution.

Intolerance itself is a form of egoism, and to condemn egoism intolerantly is to share it.

The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it.

For an idea ever to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be always old-fashioned.

When you strike at a king, you must kill him.

Nothing is really so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in itself and not in its subject.

Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.

An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.

When an idea is wanting, a word can always be found to take its place.

Of all forms of tyranny, the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of plutocracy.

Take a two-mile walk every morning before breakfast.

I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.

We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.

I could not at any age be content to take my place in a corner by the fireside and simply look on.

Mathematics is the queen of the sciences.

Whosesoever you go, go with all your heart.

Music is essentially useless, as life is: but both have an ideal extension which lends utility to its conditions.

Search others for their virtues, thyself for thy vices.

Recommend to your children virtue; that alone can make them happy, not gold.

Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.

When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him. In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.

There is a concept which corrupts and upsets all others. I refer not to Evil, whose limited realm is that of ethics; I refer to the infinite.

We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side: one which we preach but do not practice, and another which we practice but seldom preach.

It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatsoever for supposing it is true.

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.

it is a base thing to look to others for your defense instead of depending upon yourself. That defense alone is effectual, sure, and durable which depends upon yourself and your own valor.

We are certainly getting ahead; if I am Moses, then you are Joshua and will take possession of the promised land of psychiatry, which I shall only be able to glimpse from afar.

The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, they finish by loading honors on your head.