Quotes to inspire and reflect

Eloquence is the power to translate a truth into language perfectly intelligible to the person to whom you speak.

Eloquence may set fire to reason.

What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to an human soul.

Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.

In the drowsy dark caves of the mind dreams build their nest with fragments dropped from day’s caravan.

In bed my real love has always been the sleep that rescued me by allowing me to dream.

The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens to that primeval cosmic night that was soul long before there was conscious ego.

Dreams are the true interpreters of our inclinations; but there is art required to sort and understand them.

You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.

Dreams wherein we often see ourselves in masquerade.

Throw your dream into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, or a new country.

Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.

What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags Like a heavy load. Or does it explode?

Dreams nourish the soul just as food nourishes the body.

Modest doubt is call’d the beacon of the wise.

I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.

My little old dog: A heart-beat at my feet.

Doubt must be no more than vigilance, otherwise it can become dangerous.

The dog is a Yes-animal, very popular with people who can’t afford to keep a Yes-man.

Dogs live with man as courtiers round a monarch, steeped in the flattery of his notice and enriched with sinecures. To push their favor in this world of pickings and caresses is, perhaps, the business of their lives.

No great discovery was ever made in science except by one who lifted his nose above the grindstone of details and ventured on a more comprehensive vision.

What is it that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a man’s breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring to him? Discovery!

Adversity in immunological doses has its uses; more than that crushes.

What molting time is to birds, so adversity or misfortune is . . . for us humans.

Perhaps adversity is a great teacher, but he charges a high price for his lessons, and often the profit we take from them is not worth the price they have cost us.

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant.

To overcome difficulties is to experience the full delight of existence, no matter where the obstacles are encountered.

If men live decently it is because discipline Saves their very lives for them.

What is required of us is that we love the difficult and learn to deal with it. In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us.

As we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties, the inmost strength of the heart is developed.

The injustice of defeat lies in the fact that its most innocent victims are made to look like heartless accomplices.

Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.

No man is defeated without until he has first been defeated within.

Defeat is simply a signal to press onward.

Man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.

History to the defeated May say Alas but cannot help or pardon.

The man who in wavering times is inclined to be wavering only increases the evil, and spreads it wider and wider; but the man of firm decision fashions the universe.

Otherwise, why do so many people walk upright and with open eyes into their misfortune?

There is only one way to be prepared for death: to be sated. In the soul, in the heart, in the spirit, in the flesh. To the brim.

In any man who dies there dies with him his first snow and kiss and fight. It goes with him. . . . Not people die but worlds die in them.

Cynics are only happy in making the world as barren to others as they have made it for themselves.

I know perfectly well the cynic is a coward. He foresees all barrenness so that barrenness can never surprise him.

The temptation shared by all forms of intelligence: cynicism.

Cynic, n . A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.

I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity.

Curiosity . . . is insubordination in its purest form.

Curiosity is the thirst of the soul; it inflames and torments us, and makes us taste every thing with joy.

Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret.