Quotes to inspire and reflect

I seem to have been like a child playing on the sea shore, finding now and then a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before me.

Nothing lays itself open to the charge of exaggeration more than the language of naked truth.

One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.

What upsets me is not that you lied to me, but that from now on I can no longer believe you.

Of course, it’s the same old story. Truth usually is the same old story.

The color of truth is gray.

Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch. Nay, you may kick it about all day, and it will be round and full at evening.

We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.

Truth isn’t always beauty, but the hunger for it is.

The most dangerous untruths are truths moderately distorted.

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

Love beauty; it is the shadow of God on the universe.

There are no hopeless situations; there are only people who have grown hopeless about them.

Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter. Who would think that those branches would turn green again and blossom, but we hope it, we know it.

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.

In every winter’s heart there is a quivering spring, and behind the veil of each night there is a smiling dawn.

There is one thing which gives radiance to everything. It is the idea of something around the corner.

Waiting is still an occupation. It is not having anything to wait for that is terrible.

Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure but from hope to hope.

It is good enough to talk of God while we are sitting here after a nice breakfast and looking forward to a nicer luncheon, but how am I to talk of God to the millions who have to go without two meals a day? To them God can only appear as bread and butter.

Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.

If the stars should appear just one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore!

All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.

In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don’t.

Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.

The true idealist pursues what his heart says is right in a way that his head says will work.

I am an idealist. I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way.

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture and, if possible, speak a few reasonable words.

The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been kindness, beauty and truth.

Yes, there is a nirvana; it is in leading your sheep to a green pasture, and in putting your child to sleep, and in writing the last line of your poem.

Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.

Be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars.

There is only one difference between a long life and a good dinner: that, in the dinner, the sweets come last.

We are all mortal until the first kiss and the second glass of wine.

One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.

There is a sufficiency in the world for man’s need but not for man’s greed.

Seize from every moment its unique novelty, and do not prepare your joys.

He does not seem to me to be a free man who does not sometimes do nothing.

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.

Life is not dated merely by years. Events are sometimes the best calendars.

You only live once. But if you work it right, once is enough.

Every man regards his own life as the New Year’s Eve of time.

I love best to have each thing in its season, doing without it at all other times.

A man who has to be punctually at a certain place at five o’clock has the whole afternoon ruined for him already.

Butterflies count not months but moments, and yet have time enough.