Quotes to inspire and reflect

Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time.

I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.

I consider being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill.

Gluttony is not a secret vice.

Thanksgiving is a typically American holiday...The lavish meal is a symbol of the fact that abundant consumption is the result and reward of production.

I am at two with nature.

A sound mind in a sound body is a short but full description of a happy state in this world.

Great services are not canceled by one act or by one single error.

All things must change to something new, to something strange.

Tradition is a guide and not a jailer. W.

The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.

What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it.

Nietsche is Pietsche.

Nothing endures but personal qualities.

My writing is like a ten-gallon spring. It can issue from the ground anywhere at all. On smooth ground it rushes swiftly on and covers a thousand li in a single day without difficulty. When it twists and turns among mountains and rocks, it fits its form to things it meets: unknowable. What can be known is, it always goes where it must go, always stops where it cannot help stopping -- nothing else. More than that, even I cannot know.

The poet judges not as a judge judges but as the sun falling around a helpless thing.

There are very few people who are not ashamed of having been in love when they no longer love each other.

We must laugh before we are happy, for fear we die before we laugh at all.

While the gentleman cherishes benign rule, the small man cherishes his native land. While the gentleman cherishes a respect for the law, the small man cherishes generous treatment.

O, throw away the worse part of it, and live the purer with the other half.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Simple pleasures are the last refuge of the complex.

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

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

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.

The Berlin Wall is the defining achievement of socialism.

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

Only the shallow knows themselves.

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

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.

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

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.

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.