Quotes to inspire and reflect

If you wish—

 

Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point.

 

Qu’ils mangent de la brioche.

 

Often when I pray I wonder if I am not posting letters to a non-existent address.

 

A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.

 

She’s the sort of woman who lives for others—you can always tell the others by their hunted expression.

 

We have trained them [men] to think of the Future as a promised land which favoured heroes attain—not as something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.

 

Every one says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.

 

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.

 

The dead don’t die. They look on and help.

 

When I read Shakespeare I am struck with wonder

 

Now it is autumn and the falling fruit

 

I never saw a wild thing

 

Don’t you find it a beautiful clean thought, a world empty of people, just uninterrupted grass, and a hare sitting up?

 

Be a good animal, true to your instincts.

 

Pornography is the attempt to insult sex, to do dirt on it.

 

Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.

 

Blank cheques of intellectual bankruptcy.

 

When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

 

It is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.

 

That man hath the sow by the right ear.

 

Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?

 

An illiterate king is a crowned ass.

 

If we find the answer to that [why it is that we and the universe exist], it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason—for then we would know the mind of God.

 

What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe … Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?

 

The best of all the preachers are the men who live their creeds.

 

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace!

 

So Two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism. Two cheers are quite enough: there is no occasion to give three. Only Love the Beloved Republic deserves that.

 

Praised be You, my Lord, with all your creatures,

 

Pathos, piety, courage—they exist, but are identical, and so is filth. Everything exists, nothing has value.

 

If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.

 

It is a period between two wars—the long week-end it has been called.

 

Railway termini. They are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, alas! we return.

 

Timor mortis conturbat me.

 

Yes—oh dear yes—the novel tells a story.

 

All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.

 

At non effugies meos iambos.

 

Lugete, O Veneres Cupidinesque,

 

The face of ‘evil’ is always the face of total need.

 

I lingered round them, under that benign sky: watched the moths fluttering among the heath and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.

 

Junk is the ideal product … the ultimate merchandise. No sales talk necessary. The client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy.

 

My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath:—a source of little visible delight, but necessary.

 

Cold in the earth—and fifteen wild Decembers,

 

L’Angleterre, ah, la perfide Angleterre, que le rempart de ses mers rendait inaccessible aux Romains, la foi du Sauveur y est abordée. England, ah, faithless England, which the protection afforded by its seas rendered inaccessible to the Romans, the faith of the Saviour spread even there.

 

No coward soul is mine,

 

Do you believe in fairies? Say quick that you believe! If you believe, clap your hands!

 

There are few more impressive sights in the world than a Scotsman on the make.

 

To die will be an awfully big adventure.