Quotes to inspire and reflect

It is a profitable thing, if one is wise, to seem foolish.

The more pity, that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly.

Providence protects children and idiots. I know because I have tested it.

If it come to prohibiting, there is aught more likely to be prohibited than truth itself.

Think what you do when you run into debt; you give another power over your liberty.

Men are generally idle, and ready to satisfy themselves, and intimidate the industry of others, by calling that impossible which is only difficult.

Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.

The end excuses any evil.

The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means. Georges Bernanos, "Why Freedom?

Just as I shall select my ship when I am about to go on a voyage, or my house when I propose to take a residence, so I shall choose my death when I am about to depart from life.

If all the world hated you and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved of you and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.

Make all you can, save all you can, give all you can.

We do what we must, and call it by the best names.

Never go to excess, but let moderation be your guide.

Sanity is a madness put to good use.

Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself

Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck.

I have deep faith that the principle of the universe will be beautiful and simple.

Happy is he who gets to know the reasons for things.

By always thinking unto them. I keep the subject constantly before me and wait till the first dawning’s open little by little into the full light.

We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power.

The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.

If you are not a liberal at twenty, you have no heart. If you are not a conservative at forty, you have no brain.

Imagination helps bring out the realism of every detail and only sees the beauties of the work.

Be not ashamed of mistakes and thus make them crimes.

Virtuous motives, trammeled by inertia and timidity, are no match for armed and resolute wickedness. A sincere love of peace is no excuse for muddling hundreds of millions of humble folk into total war. The cheers of the weak, well-meaning assemblies soon cease to count. Doom marches on.

Without theory, practice is but routine born of habit. Theory alone can bring forth and develop the spirit of inventions.

Sometimes it takes courage to give into temptation.

I am only one; but still I am one. I may not be able to do everything, but still I can do something.

The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter; and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light amid the thorns.

Nietzche started a nonsensical idea that men had once sought as good what we now call evil; if it were so, we could not talk of surpassing or even falling short of them. G.K.

The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it it his head that splits. G.K.

To the body and mind which have been cramped by noxious work or company, nature is medicinal and restores their tone.

One must somehow find a way of loving the world without trusting it; somehow one must love the world without being worldly. G.K.

Time is: Too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear.

In the cage there is food, not much, but there is food-outside are only great stretches of freedom.

The secret of success is constancy to purpose.

Attempt easy tasks as if they were difficult, and difficult as if they were easy; in the one case that confidence may not fall asleep, in the other that it may not be dismayed.

Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.

Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.

The source of genius is imagination alone, the refinement of the senses that sees what others do not see, or sees them differently.

Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.

I can believe anything, provided that it is quite incredible.

Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.

He who is not very strong in memory should not meddle with lying.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.