Quotes to inspire and reflect

Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons. It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.

In his errors a man is true to type. Observe the errors and you will know the man.

It is only the benevolent man who is capable of liking or disliking other men.

If a man remembers what is right at the sign of profit, is ready to lay down his life in the face of danger, and does not forget sentiments he has repeated all his life when he has been in straitened circumstances for a long time, he may be said to be a complete man.

To govern is to correct. If you set an example by being correct, who would dare remain incorrect?

Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.

A torn jacket is soon mended; but hard words bruise the heart of a child.

I still believe in liberalism today as much as I ever did, but, oh, there was a happy time when I believed in liberals... G. K.

Each of us visits this Earth involuntarily, and without an invitation. For me, it is enough to wonder at the secrets.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live. It is asking other people to live as one wishes to live.

Experience is a good school, but the fees are high.

Simple pleasures are the last refuge of the complex.

If a man who cannot count finds a four-leaf clover, is he entitled to happiness?

Experience...is simply the name we give our mistakes.

Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do, than what one can do.

Many a zero thinks it is the ellipse on which the Earth travels.

Football is a mistake. It combines the two worst elements of American life. Violence and committee meetings.

The Berlin Wall is the defining achievement of socialism.

To be willing to die for an idea is to set a rather high price on conjecture.

Only the shallow knows themselves.

The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture, and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.

To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability.

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.

Non-violence is the policy of the vegetable kingdom H. G.

The chalk marks are transient, the formulas eternal. S.

The superfluous is very necessary.

War is a matter of vital importance to the State; the province of life or death; the road to survival or ruin. It is mandatory that it be thoroughly studied.

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it.

If there is one basic element in our Constitution, it is civilian control of the military

Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.

It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

When you betray somebody else, you also betray yourself.

Life is a disease; and the only difference between one another is the stage of the disease at which he lives.

Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is genius.

Each religion, by the help of more or less myth which it takes more or less seriously, proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and enabling it to make its peace with its destiny.

If you want to know your true opinion of someone, watch the effect produced in you by the first sight of a letter from him.

This is no time to act like a gentleman. I am a cad and shall react like one.

Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer: there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness.

It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English -- up to fifty words used in correct context -- no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese.

But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.

You should never bet against anything in science at odds of more than about 10-12 to 1.

The important thing is not to stop questioning.

In all things it is a good idea to hang a question mark now and then on the things we have taken for granted.

The great virtue of my radicalism lies in the fact that I am perfectly ready, if necessary, to be radical on the conservative side.

The discovery of this strange society was a curiously refreshing thing; to realize that there were ten new trades in the world was like looking at the first ship or the first plough. It made a man feel what he should feel, that he was still in the childhood of the world. G. K.

Nature, whose sweet rains fall of just and unjust alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undetected. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole.

There are two kinds of people, those who finish what they start and so on.