Quotes to inspire and reflect

Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.

Talent finds its models, methods, and ends in society, exists for exhibition, and goes to the soul only for power to work. Genius is its own end, and draws its means and the style of its architecture from within.

We take care of our health, we lay up money, we make our roof tight and our clothing sufficient, but who provides wisely that he shall not be wanting the best property of all -- friends?

Genius is a bend in the creek where bright water has gathered, and which mirrors the trees, the sky and the banks. It just does that because it is there and the scenery is there. Talent is a fine mirror with a silver frame, with the name of the owner engraved on the back.

One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed.

Do not speak harshly to any one; those who are spoken to will answer thee in the same way. Angry speech is painful: blows for blows will touch thee.

They (who) seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers. . . call this a new order. It is not new and it is not order.

Look well into thyself; there is a source of strength which will always spring up if thou wilt always look there.

For glory gives herself only to those who have always dreamed of her.

To govern is always to choose among disadvantages.

I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.

For what is liberty but the unhampered translation of will into act?

Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.

A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.

Nature is not cruel, pitilessly, indifferent. This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous -- indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose.

One thing life has taught me: if you are interested, you never have to look for new interests. They come to you. When you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else.

Then he saw also that it matters little what profession, whether of religion or irreligion, a man may make, provided only he follows it out with charitable inconsistency, and without insisting on it to the bitter end. It is in the uncompromisingness with which dogma is held and not in the dogma or want of dogma that the danger lies.

Education is what most receive, many pass on, and few possess.

Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.

If you would stand well with a great mind, leave him with a favorable impression of yourself; if with a little mind, leave him with a favorable impression of himself.

Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.

The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.

The way to procure insults is to submit to them: a man meets with no more respect than he exacts.

All human power is a compound of time and patience.

If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of potential -- for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints; possibility never.

Happy is he who can give himself up.

Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself - and thus make yourself indispensable.

It is often merely for an excuse that we say things are impossible.

Be sure that it is not you that is mortal, but only your body. For that man whom your outward form reveals is not yourself; the spirit is the true self, not that physical figure which and be pointed out by your finger.

He who has never failed somewhere. . . that man cannot be great.

Genius is talent provided with ideals.

Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.

We pass the word around; we ponder how the case is put by different people, we read the poetry; we meditate over the literature; we play the music; we change our minds; we reach an understanding. Society evolves this way, not by shouting each other down, but by the unique capacity of unique, individual human beings to comprehend each other.

The past is but the past of a beginning. H. G.

Love is an attempt at penetrating another being, but it can only succeed if the surrender is mutual.

Age is opportunity no less than youth itself.

Explanation separates us from astonishment, which is the only gateway to the incomprehensible.

We are a spectacular, splendid manifestation of life. We have language. We have affection We have genes for usefulness, and usefulness is about as close to a "common goal" of nature as I can guess at. And finally, and perhaps best of all, we have music.

In wilderness is the preservation of the world.

To be a well-flavored man is the gift of fortune, but to write or read comes by nature.

He was a genius - that is to say, a man who does superlatively and without obvious effort something that most people cannot do by the uttermost exertion of their abilities.

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealized past.

There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity.

There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.

To be a book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with those of a miser.

So long as we live among men, let us cherish humanity.

I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated.

Seek simplicity, and distrust it.