Quotes to inspire and reflect

An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.

Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.

Wit ought to be a glorious treat, like caviar. Never spread it about like marmalade.

It is part of the cure to wish to be cured.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Humor is laughing at what you haven’t got when you ought to have it.

Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.

Among those whom I like, I can find no common denominator; but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.

An ecstasy is a thing that will not go into words; it feels like music.

Don’t wait around for other people to be happy for you. Any happiness you get you’ve got to make yourself.

The summit of happiness is reached when a person is ready to be what he is.

The discontented man finds no easy chair.

Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

Before strongly desiring anything, we should look carefully into the happiness of its present owner.

The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere.

Men hate those to whom they have to lie.

We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable.

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

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

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

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

The color of truth is gray.

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

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.

The most dangerous untruths are truths moderately distorted.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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?