Quotes to inspire and reflect

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

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

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

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

Take a two-mile walk every morning before breakfast.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

There is no observation more frequently made by such as employ themselves in surveying the conduct of mankind, than that marriage, though the dictate of nature, and the institution of Providence, is yet very often the cause of misery, and that those who enter into that state can seldom forbear to express their repentance, and their envy of those whom either chance or caution hath withheld from it.

To live without killing is a thought which could electrify the world, if men were only capable of staying awake long enough to let the idea soak in.

As I was walking among the fires of Hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius; which to Angels look like torment and insanity. I collected some of their Proverbs.

Use harms and even destroys beauty. The noblest function of an object is to be contemplated.

I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave up - they have no holidays.

It is necessary to work, if not from inclination, at least from despair. Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself.

The best remedy for a bruised heart is not, as so many people seem to think, repose upon a manly bosom. Much more efficacious are honest work, physical activity, and sudden acquisition of wealth.

He had the entertainment of thinking that if he had for that moment stopped the clock it was to promote the next minute this still livelier motion.

She had fortunately always her appetite for news. The pure flame of the disinterested burned in her cave of treasures as a lamp in a Byzantine vault.

There are certainly moments," said Chad, "when you seem to me too good to be true. Yet if you are true," he added, "that seems to be all that need concern me.

Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. Science is the highest personification of the nation because that nation will remain the first which carries the furthest the works of thought and intelligence.

Splitting the atom is like trying to shoot a gnat in the Albert Hall at night and using ten million rounds of ammunition on the off chance of getting it. That should convince you that the atom will always be a sink of energy and never a reservoir of energy.

I feel how little she can like being told of her owing me anything. No woman ever enjoys such an obligation to another woman.

It struck him really that he had never so lived with her as during this period of her silence; the silence was a sacred hush, a finer clearer medium, in which her idiosyncrasies showed.

Wear a smile and have friends, wear a scowl and have wrinkles.

Our critics are our friends; they show us our faults.

Millions of men have lived to fight, build palaces and boundaries, shape destinies and societies; but the compelling force of all times has been the force of originality and creation profoundly affecting the roots of human spirit. Ansel Adams #8526The poor complain that they are governed badly. The rich complain that they are governed at all. G. K.

It is one of the great secrets of life that those things which are most worth doing, we do for others.

Education is a companion which no misfortune can depress, no crime can destroy, no enemy can alienate, no despotism can enslave. At home, a friend, abroad, an introduction, in solitude a solace and in society an ornament. It chastens vice, it guides virtue, it gives at once grace and government to genius. Without it, what is man? A splendid slave, a reasoning savage.

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.

To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.

Through me you pass into the city of woe: Through me you pass into eternal pain: Through me among the people lost for aye. Justice the founder of my fabric moved: To rear me was the task of power divine, Supremes wisdom, and primeval love Before me things create were none, save things Eternal, and eternal I shall endure. All hope abandon, ye who enter here.

Avarice, envy, pride, three fatal sparks, have set the hearts of all On Fire.

One should never direct people towards happiness, because happiness too is an idol of the market-place. One should direct them towards mutual affection. A beast gnawing at its prey can be happy too, but only human beings can feel affection for each other, and this is the highest achievement they can aspire to.

Be not simply good - be good for something.

I have always been impressed by the fact that there are a surprising number of individuals who never use their minds if they can avoid it, and an equal number who do use their minds, but in an amazingly stupid way.