Quotes to inspire and reflect

If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.

If indeed you must be candid, be candid beautifully.

The superior man is modest in his speech, but excels in his actions.

Always be ready to speak your mind and a base man will avoid you.

People are ridiculous only when they try or seem to be that which what they are not.

Treat people as if they were what they should be, and you help them become what they are capable of becoming.

The mere sense of living is joy enough.

A good garden may have some weeds.

For what are possessions but things we guard for fear we might need them tomorrow?

He who limps still walks.

We are behaving like people without compassion and love for the most vulnerable section of society. The children of the universe are without a spokesperson; they are voiceless? We are all touched by the atrocities committed against children: sexual, physical abuse, child slave labor, educational neglect. We feel ashamed. Angry. Appalled. But there is no action? No action.

Above all, try something.

You keep changing? the rules and I can’t play the game. I can’t take it much longer. I think I might go insane.

Look who’s standing if you please, though you tried to bring me to my knees.

To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!

The multitude of books is making us ignorant.

To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood.

If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.

In all recorded history there has not been one economist who has had to worry about where the next meal would come from.

It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull

There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.

Treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.

The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write a book about it.

You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.

He who postpones the hour of living rightly is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses.

Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good.

Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but, unlike charity, it should end there.

If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches.

I never took hallucinogenic drugs because I never wanted my consciousness expanded one unnecessary iota.

Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.

There are only two ways of telling the complete truth--anonymously and posthumously.

The Romans would never have found time to conquer the world if they had been obliged first to learn Latin.

Behind the phony tinsel of Hollywood lies the real tinsel.

To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity.

If you aspire to the highest place, it is no disgrace to stop at the second, or even the third, place.

Know how to ask. There is nothing more difficult for some people, nor for others, easier.

A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world.

It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.

Before you contradict an old man, my fair friend, you should endeavor to understand him.

The days of the digital watch are numbered.

The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.

The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.

We think in generalities, but we live in detail.

Life is an unbroken succession of false situations.

Your first appearance, he said to me, is the gauge by which you will be measured; try to manage that you may go beyond yourself in after times, but beware of ever doing less.

I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.

Never do anything when you are in a temper, for you will do everything wrong.

I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.