Quotes to inspire and reflect

When we sing the blues, we’re singing out our hearts, we’re singing out our feelings. Maybe we’re hurt and just can’t answer back, then we sing or maybe even hum the blues.

As a form, the blues is an autobiographical chronicle of personal catastrophe expressed lyrically.

They’ve laughed to shield their crying then shuffled through the dreams and stepped ’n fetched a country to write the blues with screams.

My own education operated by a succession of eye-openers each involving the repudiation of some previously held belief.

One person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.

We are so constituted that we believe the most incredible things; and, once they are engraved upon the memory, woe to him who would endeavor to erase them.

Human psychology has a near-universal tendency to let belief be colored by desire.

Beauty is only a promise of happiness.

In every man’s heart there is a secret nerve that answers to the vibrations of beauty.

The ideal has many names, and beauty is but one of them.

Beauty can pierce one like a pain.

Beauty is everywhere a welcome guest.

Bait, n . A preparation that renders the hook more palatable. The best kind is beauty.

There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles, from the desperate to the sheepish.

There is nothing that makes its way more directly to the soul than beauty.

Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of reference.

Zeal is a volcano, on the peak of which the grass of indecisiveness does not grow.

All zeal for a reform that gives offense To peace and charity, is mere pretense.

A soiled baby, with a neglected nose, cannot be conscientiously regarded as a thing of beauty; and inasmuch as babyhood spans but three short years, no baby is competent to be a joy “forever.”

Zeal, n . A certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and inexperienced. A passion that goeth before a sprawl.

A baby is God’s opinion that the world should go on.

The baby, assailed by eyes, ears, nose, skin, and entrails at once, feels it all as one great blooming, buzzing confusion.

The babe in arms is a channel through which the energies we call fate, love, and reason visibly stream.

The human baby . . . is a mosaic of animal and angel.

Youth wrenches the scepter from old age, and sets the crown on its own head before it is entitled to it.

Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.

Youth lives on hope, old age on remembrance.

So different are the colors of life as we look forward to the future, or backward to the past . . . that the conversation of the old and young ends generally with contempt or pity on either side.

The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.

The deepest definition of Youth is Life as yet untouched by tragedy.

It is not possible for civilization to flow backward while there is youth in the world.

In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in a theater before the curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the play to begin.

Youth is like spring, an overpraised season— delightful if it happen to be a favored one, but in practice very rarely favored and more remarkable, as a general rule, for biting east winds than genial breezes.

Years following years steal something every day; At last they steal us from ourselves away.

Years are only garments, and you either wear them with style all your life, or else you go dowdy to the grave.

Our years Glide silently away.

There are years that ask questions and years that answer.

The years teach much which the days never know.

Years steal Fire from the mind as vigor from the limb.

I could not prove that years had feet— Yet confident they run.

could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end.

Dear authors! Suit your topics to your strength, And ponder well your subject, and its length; Nor lift your load, before you’re quite aware What weight your shoulders will, or will not, bear.

whose wick is in permanent danger of explosion, whose blinking illumination in the coal dust exhausts and corrodes your eyes.

you kill the monster and fling him to the public.

There is no doubt that I have lots of words inside me; but at moments, like rush-hour traffic at the mouth of a tunnel, they jam.

I live with the people I create and it has always made my essential loneliness less keen.

A day when I do not write tastes of ashes.

My stories have led me through my life. They shout, I follow. They run up and bite me on the leg— I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go.