Quotes to inspire and reflect

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.

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.

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

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 errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.

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.

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.

Seek simplicity, and distrust it.

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.

Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and probably wrong.

We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.

I loathe the expression "What makes him tick." It is the American mind, looking for simple and singular solution, that uses the foolish expression. A person not only ticks, he also chimes and strikes the hour, falls and breaks and has to be put together again, and sometimes stops like an electric clock in a thunderstorm.

Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever.

Minds, like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort.

If the point is sharp, and the arrow is swift, it can pierce through the dust no matter how thick.

It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.

For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.

When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.

The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.

Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.

I might repeat to myself slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound - if I can remember any of the damn things.

Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think.

Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.

We are what we repeatedly do.

A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.

Give all to love; obey thy heart.

When you have loved as she has loved, you grow old beautifully. W.

When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.

The Argument from Intimidation is a confession of intellectual impotence.

I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction.

The scornful nostril and the high head gather not the odors that lie on the track of truth.

Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all - the apathy of human beings.

The animals of the planet are in desperate peril... Without free animal life I believe we will lose the spiritual equivalent of oxygen.

It is not advisable, James, to venture unsolicited opinions. You should spare yourself the embarrassing discovery of their exact value to your listener.