Quotes to inspire and reflect

Doubtless criticism was originally benignant, pointing out the beauties of a work rather that its defects. The passions of men have made it malignant, as a bad heart of Procrustes turned the bed, the symbol of repose, into an instrument of torture.

Ours is an age of criticism, to which everything must be subjected. The sacredness of religion, and the authority of legislation, are by many regarded as grounds for exemption from the examination by this tribunal, But, if they are exempted, and cannot lay claim to sincere respect, which reason accords only to that which has stood the test of a free and public examination.

Take everything you like seriously, except yourselves.

It is folly for an eminent person to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected by it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age, have passed through this fiery persecution. There is no defense against reproach but obscurity; it is a kind of concomitant to greatness, as satires and invectives were an essential part of a Roman triumph.

Everyone is as God has made him, and oftentimes a great deal worse.

Physicists like to think that all you have to do is say, these are the conditions, now what happens next?

It is equally offensive to speed a guest who would like to stay and to detain one who is anxious to leave.

Fortune can, for her pleasure, fools advance, and toss them on the wheels of Chance.

The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand.

I keep the subject of my inquiry constantly before me, and wait till the first dawning opens gradually, by little and little, into a full and clear light.

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.

I do not have a psychiatrist and I do not want one, for the simple reason that if he listened to me long enough, he might become disturbed.

As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, keep it.

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.

Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupid.

We confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no large ones.

Refuse to be ill. Never tell people you are ill; never own it to yourself. Illness is one of those things which a man should resist on principle.

The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The lighter you shine on it, the more it will contract.

The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.

From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.

Get happiness out of your work or you may never know what happiness is.

What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens.

Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.

Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.

While the fates permit, live happily; life speeds on with hurried step, and with winged days the wheel of the headlong year is turned.

Cherish all your happy moments: they make a fine cushion for old age.

Doing a thing well is often a waste of time.

Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable.

I see her not dispirited, not weak, but well, remembering that she has seen dark times before, indeed with a kind of instinct that she sees a little better in a cloudy day.

Dreamers can find their way by moonlight and their only punishment is that they see the dawn before the rest of the world.

Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.

Cowardice asks the question - is it safe? Expediency asks the question - is it politic? Vanity asks the question - is it popular? But conscience asks the question - is it righ And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right. Dr.

No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.

No man who ever held the office of president would congratulate a friend on obtaining it.

Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms.

Most people live ninety percent in the past, seven percent in the present, and that only leaves three percent for the future.

Talents are best nurtured in solitude; but character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world.

Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine.

We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.

The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers and cities, but to know that there is someone who, though distant, thinks and feels with us -- this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.

If we would build on a sure foundation in friendship, we must love friends for their sake rather than for our own.

My business is not to remake myself, but make the absolute best of what God made.

To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization.

Get not your friends by bare compliments, but by giving them sensible tokens of your love.

Live among men as if God beheld you; speak to God as if men were listening.