Quotes to inspire and reflect

Thanks to his constant habit of shaking the bottle in which life handed him the wine of experience, he presently found the taste of the lees rising as usual into his draught.

People can be in general pretty well trusted, of course--with the clock of their freedom ticking as loud as it seems to do here--to keep an eye on the fleeting hour.

The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.

He who would travel happily must travel light.

The word "happiness" would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.

The strictest law sometimes becomes the severest injustice.

Own only what you can carry with you; know language, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.

Distrust and caution are the parents of security.

The absent are never without fault, nor the present without excuse.

Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed.

Think of how many religions attempt to validate themselves with prophecy. Think of how many people rely on these prophecies, however vague, however unfulfilled, to support or prop up their beliefs. Yet has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science?

Personally, I would be delighted if there were a life after death, especially if it permitted me to continue to learn about this world and others, if it gave me a chance to discover how history turns out.

If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?

To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.

Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.

As soon as there is life there is danger.

When you have told anyone you have left him a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once.

Be entirely tolerant or not at all; follow the good path or the evil one. To stand at the crossroads requires more strength than you possess.

Death? It’s the only thing we haven’t succeeded in completely vulgarizing.

Death is not the worst thing; rather, when one who craves death cannot attain even that wish.

There is a great deal of wishful thinking in such cases; it is the easiest thing of all to deceive one’s self.

I shall despair. There is no creature loves me; And if I die no soul will pity me: And wherefore should they, since that I myself Find in myself no pity to myself?

Desire makes everything blossom; possession makes everything wither and fade.

We have to believe in free will. We’ve got no choice.

The bitterest tragic element in life to be derived from an intellectual source is the belief in a brute Fate or Destiny.

There is nothing more dreadful than imagination without taste.

At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.

The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.

Men of genius do not excel in any profession because they labor in it, but they labor in it because they excel.

Devotees of grammatical studies have not been distinguished for any very remarkable felicities of expression.

We need never be ashamed of our tears.

Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore, we must learn both arts.

Cowardly dogs bark loudest.

Civilization degrades the many to exalt the few.

The best coffee in Europe is Vienna coffee, compared to which all other coffee is fluid poverty.

Once there was The People - Terror gave it birth; Once there was The People, and it made a hell of earth! Earth arose and crushed it. Listen, oh, ye slain! Once there was The People - it shall never be again!

A wide screen just makes a bad film twice as bad.

Every woman knows all about everything.

Funny how the new things are the old things.

We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts, have their root in Greece.

Audacious ribald: your laughter will finish in hideous boredom before morning.

He who neglects to drink from the spring of experience is likely to die of thirst in the desert of ignorance.

Ten thousand fools proclaim themselves into obscurity, while one wise man forgets himself into immortality.

Better shun the bait, then struggle in the snare.

You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.

We rarely think people have good sense unless they agree with us.

Work while you have the light. You are responsible for the talent that has been entrusted to you.

Arguments out of a pretty mouth are unanswerable.