Quotes to inspire and reflect

We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn't do.

In a word, neither death, nor exile, nor pain, nor anything of this kind is the real cause of our doing or not doing any action, but our inward opinions and principles.

When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.

To succeed, jump as quickly at opportunities as you do at conclusions.

The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.

Anybody who believes that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach flunked geography.

In some families, please is described as the magic word. In our house, however, it was sorry.

Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's.

Nobody ever died of laughter.

What you are shouts so loudly in my ears I cannot hear what you say.

If you can’t handle me at my worst, then you don’t deserve me at my best.

Great spirits have always been violently oppressed by mediocre minds.

Women are made to be loved, not understood.

All emotions are pure which gather you and lift you up; that emotion is impure which seizes only one side of your being and so distorts you.

Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going.

She's the kind of girl who climbed the ladder of success wrong by wrong.

In order to have friends, you must first be one.

The essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present, but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality and hope where others have resigned; it enables a man to hold his head high, to claim the future for himself and not to abandon it to his enemy.

Always do what you are afraid to do.

Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure, nor this thing nor that, but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing.

Marriage is a friendship recognized by the police.

Live your life and forget your age.

Do not waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.

I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.

The need to find meaning . . . is as real as the need for trust and for love, for relations with other human beings.

To those who have given up on love, I say, ‘trust life a little bit.’

All the windows of my heart I open to the day.

Who could refrain that had a heart to love and in that heart courage to make love known?

Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

Non-violence, which is the quality of the heart, cannot come by an appeal to the brain.

Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.

When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before.

Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.

If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner.

We ought never to allow ourselves to be persuaded of the truth of anything unless on the evidence of our own reason.

A wise man, recognizing that the world is but an illusion, does not act as if it is real, so he escapes the suffering.

And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.

A sacred thing is timely silence, and better than any speech.

Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.

I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better.

It is much easier to be a hero than a gentleman.

Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience.

The manner in which it is given is worth more than the gift.

Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.

It is a great mistake for men to give up paying compliments, for when they give up saying what is charming, they give up thinking what is charming.

Nothing prevents us from being natural so much as the desire to appear so.