Quotes to inspire and reflect

Ambition is so powerful a passion in the human breast, that however high we reach we are never satisfied.

Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions; but those who kindly reprove thy faults.

If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain as he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought and could be.

When you learn, teach. When you get, give.

The future belongs to those who can rise above the confines of the earth.

And once again Mr. Sherlock Holmes is free to devote his life to examining those interesting little problems which the complexity of human life so pletifuly presents.

We thought we were running away from the grown-ups, and now we are the grown-ups.

All our final decisions are made in a state of mind that is not going to last.

Love goes out the door when money comes innuendo.

I walk ahead of myself in perpetual expectancy of miracles.

A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.

For none of us can ever express the exact measure of his needs or his thoughts or his sorrows; and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

Lakes, rivers, streams...all are water and all travel to the same destination. So it is with religion.

We are like sculptors, constantly carving out of others the image we long for, need, love or desire, often against reality, against their benefit, and always, in the end, a disappointment, because it does not fit them.

Any life, no matter how long and complex it may be, is made up of a single moment - the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.

I dwell in possibilities.

Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt. Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian #3601 When one door of happiness closes, another one opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened to us. Helen Keller #3602I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.

God give me strength to face a fact though it slays me. Thomas H.

The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental or spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.

He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties. He must use observation to see, reasoning and judgment to foresee, activity to gather materials for decision, discrimination to decide, and when he has decided, firmness and self-control to hold to his deliberate decision.

No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead. Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study, and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think.

I like this place, and willingly would waste my time in it.

Everything beautiful has its moment, and then passes away.

Vile deeds like poison weeds bloom well in prison air, it is only what is good in man, that wastes and withers there.

If there is a sin against life, it consist perhaps not so much in despairing of life as hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

Men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, for everyone can see and few can feel. Everyone sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are.

The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.

Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.

The comfort of having a friend may be taken away, but not that of having had one.

You cannot acquire experience by making experiments. You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.

We are not separate from spirit; we are in it.

Emancipate yourself from mental slavery; none but ourselves can free our minds.

So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meanness’s are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise.

Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.

The silent bear no witness against themselves.

New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.

Love is an endless mystery, for it has nothing else to explain it. Rabindranath Tagore, Whisperings. The Inspirational Writings of Rabindranath Tagore on Nature, Love and Life. #3532 All that happens means something; nothing you do is ever insignificant.

You think your pains and heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who have ever been alive.

The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums. G. K.

Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.

No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.

To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream.

I would rather be ashes than dust. I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by a dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in a magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

I believe I shall, in some shape or other, always exist; and, with all the inconveniences human life is liable to, I shall not object to a new edition of mine, hoping, however, that the errata of the last may be corrected.

After the bare requisites of living and reproducing, man wants most to leave some record of himself, a proof, perhaps, that he has really existed. He leaves his proof on wood, on stone, or on the lives of other people. This deep desire exists in everyone, from the boy who scribbles on a wall to the Buddha who etches his image in the race mind. Life is so unreal. I think that we seriously doubt that we exist and go about trying to prove that we do.

Inhabitants of underdeveloped nations and victims of natural disasters are the only people who have ever been happy to see soybeans.

Cursed be he that moves my bones.