Quotes to inspire and reflect

We must beat the iron while it is hot, but we may polish it at leisure.

In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions: know that you are alone in the world.

For the sword outwears its sheath, And the soul wears out the breast, And the heart must pause for breath, And love itself have rest.

Grow old along with me the best is yet to be.

Lady you bereft me of all words, Only my blood speaks to you in my veins, and there is such confusion in my powers.

I wish you well and so I take my leave, I Pray you know me when we meet again.

We must, however, acknowledge as it seems to me, that a man with all his noble qualities...still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.

Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.

He who allows himself to be insulted, deserves to be.

I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists.

The difference of race is one of the reasons why I fear war may always exist; because race implies difference, difference implies superiority, and superiority leads to predominance.

A really great man is known by three signs... generosity in the design, humanity in the execution, moderation in success.

The man who backbites an absent friend, nay, who does not stand up for him when another blames him, the man who angles for bursts of laughter and for the repute of a wit, who can invent what he never saw, who cannot keep a secret - that man is black at heart: mark and avoid him.

Leisure is the mother of philosophy.

The proposition that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties is not true. They are the worst conceivable, they are no keepers at all; they can neither judge, act, think, or will, as a political body.

The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence. Thomas H.

Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.

A happy life consists in tranquility of mind.

There is a wide difference between speaking to deceive, and being silent to be impenetrable.

The best effect of any book is that it excites the reader to self-activity.

Have patience awhile; slanders are not long-lived. Truth is the child of time; erelong she shall appear to vindicate thee.

You despise books; you whose lives are absorbed in the vanities of ambition, the pursuit of pleasure or indolence; but remember that all the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.

Tis the good reader that makes the good book.

Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.

The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.

It is not enough to help the feeble up, but to support him after. William Shakespeare #7891 Whoever is open, loyal, true; of humane and affable demeanor; honorable himself, and in his judgement of others; faithful to his word as to law, and faithful alike to God and man. such a man is a true gentleman.

A weak man has doubts before a decision, a strong man has them afterwards.

It is an error to imagine that evolution signifies a constant tendency to increased perfection. That process undoubtedly involves a constant remodeling of the organism in adaptation to new conditions; but it depends on the nature of those conditions whether the directions of the modifications effected shall be upward or downward. Thomas H.

The history of the human race, viewed as a whole may be regarded as the realization of a hidden plan of nature to bring about a political constitution, internally, and for this purpose, also externally perfect, as the only state in which all the capacities implanted by her in mankind can be fully developed.

Fashion is the science of appearances, and it inspires one with the desire to seem rather than to be.

The soul of this man is in his clothes.

Experience teaches only the teachable.

Perfection of moral virtue does not wholly take away the passions, but regulates them.

In the state of nature...all men are born equal, but they cannot continue in this equality. Society makes them lose it, and they recover it only by the protection of the law.

There are some duties we owe even to those who have wronged us. There is, after all, a limit to retribution and punishment.

We are obliged to respect, defend and maintain the common bonds of union and fellowship that exist among all members of the human race.

Let us have a care not to disclose our hearts to those who shut up theirs against us.

Pity is the virtue of the law, and none but tyrants use it cruelly.

Only one absolute certainty is possible to man, namely that at any given moment the feeling which he has exists. Thomas H.

Neither can embellishments of language be found without arrangement and expression of thoughts, nor can thoughts be made to shine without the light of language.

The memory should be specially taxed in youth, since it is then that it is strongest and most tenacious. But in choosing the things that should be committed to memory the utmost care and forethought must be exercised; as lessons well learnt in youth are never forgotten.

Ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities.

There is no greater mistake than the hasty conclusion that opinions are worthless because they are badly argued. Thomas H.

There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant.

That there should one Man die ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, this I call a tragedy.

He who tells a lie is not sensible of how great a task he undertakes; for he must be forced to invent twenty more to maintain that one.

To give a satisfactory decision as to the truth it is necessary to be rather an arbitrator than a party to the dispute.

There is no discipline in the world so severe as the discipline of experience subjected to the tests of intelligent development and direction.