Quotes
Quotes to inspire and reflect
One advantage resulting from virtuous actions is that they elevate the mind and dispose it to attempt others more virtuous still.
11
Nobody sees with his eyes alone; we see with our souls.
9
Virtue would not go nearly so far if vanity did not keep her company.
13
He is ill clothed that is bare of virtue.
9
Some are destroyed by defeat, and some made small and mean by victory. Greatness lives in one who triumphs equally over defeat and victory.
10
Virtue . . . is a mean state between two vices, the one of excess and the other of deficiency.
8
There are defeats more triumphant than victories.
12
More people are ruined by victory, I imagine, than by defeat.
8
The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult.
11
It is no doubt a good thing to conquer on the field of battle, but it needs greater wisdom and greater skill to make use of victory.
12
All victories breed hate, and that over your superior is foolish or fatal.
11
The moment of greatest peril is the moment of victory.
13
The god of Victory is said to be one-handed, but Peace gives victory to both sides.
11
There is never an instant’s truce between virtue and vice.
10
I prefer an accommodating vice to an obstinate virtue.
13
Sometimes Virtue starves, while Vice is fed.
15
There are amiable vices and obnoxious virtues.
10
There are some faults so nearly allied to excellence that we can scarce weed out the vice without eradicating the virtue.
16
The author always loads his dice, but he must never let the reader see that he has done so.
10
The author’s character is read from title-page to end. Of this he never corrects the proofs.
15
Authorship of any sort is a fantastic indulgence of the ego.
12
I never saw an author in my life, saving perhaps one, that did not purr as audibly as a full-grown domestic cat on having his fur smoothed the right way by a skillful hand.
10
An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.
16
Some, either from being glued to vice by a natural attachment, or from long habit, no longer recognize its ugliness.
8
Astronomy was born of superstition; eloquence of ambition, hatred, falsehood, and flattery; geometry of avarice; physics of an idle curiosity; and even moral philosophy of human pride. Thus the arts and sciences owe their birth to our vices.
11
When our vices leave us, we flatter ourselves that we leave them.
14
Vice knows she’s ugly, so puts on her Mask.
7
and require moderate use rather than total abstinence.
12
It is only in some corner of the brain which we leave empty that Vice can obtain a lodging.
12
So in the wicked there’s no vice Of which the saints have not a spice.
9
Everyone has his vanity, and each one’s vanity is his forgetting that there are others with an equal soul.
40
Vanity dies hard; in some obstinate cases it outlives the man.
11
Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory.
13
The most violent passions sometimes leave us at rest, but vanity agitates us constantly.
15
Vanity working on a weak head produces every sort of mischief.
12
Nothing is so agonizing to the fine skin of vanity as the application of a rough truth!
10
How can you expect a man who’s warm to understand one who’s cold?
8
A desire to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired by his fellows is one of the earliest as well as the keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man.
10
You have to be grown up, really grown up, not merely in years, to understand your parents.
19
You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view— until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.
16
We do know that no one gets wise enough to really understand the heart of another, though it is the task of our life to try.
9
If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.
15
The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one’s own.
22
All persons are puzzles until at last we find in some word or act the key to the man, to the woman; straightway all their past words and actions lie in light before us.
13
No one has ever taken the trouble to stretch and carry his understanding as far as it could go.
12
Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
10
Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.
13
If you only hear one side of the story, you have no understanding at all.
10