Quotes to inspire and reflect

The true test of a civilization is not the census, nor the size of the cities, nor the crops? No, but the kind of man the country turns out.

When you are eight years old, nothing is any of your business.

Scorching my seared heart with a pain, not hell shall make me fear again.

Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.

Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad.

When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others.

Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.

Give us this day our daily Faith, but deliver, dear God, from Belief. A.

I wish you music to help with the burdens of life, and to help you release your happiness to others.

Music, verily, is the mediator between intellectual and sensuous life... the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.

I have never thought of writing for reputation and honor. What I have in my heart must come out; that is the reason why I compose.

We mortals with immortal minds are only born for sufferings and joys, and one could almost say that the most excellent receive joy through sufferings.

In obedience there is always fear, and fear darkens the mind. J.

If you lose money you lose much, if you lose friends you lose more, If you lose faith you lose all.

When one loses the deep intimate relationship with nature, then temples, mosques and churches become important. J.

I am certainly not one of those who need to be prodded. In fact, if anything, I am the prod.

Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

The jungle is dark but full of diamonds...

Middle age is when your age starts to show around the middle.

Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

Why, you may take the most gallant sailor, the most intrepid airman or the most audacious soldier, put them at a table together- what do you get? The sum of all fears.

There are now two great nations in the world, which starting from different points, seem to be advancing toward the same goal: the Russians and the Anglo-Americans...Each seems called by some secret design of Providence one day to hold in its hands the destinies of half the world.

We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.

Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.

A nation that draws too broad a difference between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting done by fools.

The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, an almost fanatical love of justice, and the desire for personal independence - these are the features of Jewish tradition that make me thank my stars that I belong to it.

I am eternally grateful. for my knack of finding in great books, some of them very funny books, reason enough to feel honored to be alive, no matter what else might be going on.

Never be bored, and you will never be boring.

Our own acts are isolated and one act does not buy absolution for another.

We taste and feel and see the truth. We do not reason ourselves into it.

Have not all races had their first unity from a mythology that marries them to rock and hill?

A child only educated at school is an uneducated child.

Nothing amuses me more than the easy manner with which everybody settles the abundance of those who have a great deal less than themselves.

Get the facts, or the facts will get you. And when you get them, get them right, or they will get you wrong. Dr.

Education begins a gentleman, conversation completes him. Dr.

With foxes we must play the fox. Dr.

Money is the sinew of love as well as war. Dr.

I can take any amount of criticism as long as I can consider it unqualified praise.

Be gentle with the young.

We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation-rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing.

For there is no question but a just fear of an imminent danger, though there be no blow given, is a lawful cause of war.

Where any one body of educated men, of whatever denomination, are condemned indiscriminately, there must be a deficiency of information, or...of something else.

Oh! do not attack me with your watch. A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch.

Everybody likes to go their own way--to choose their own time and manner of devotion.

It will, I believe, be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation.

War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.

All is ephemeral--fame and the famous as well.

Somewhere between the Angels and the French lies the rest of humanity.