Quotes to inspire and reflect

A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals . . . he seeks to establish a relationship.

I am a galley slave to pen and ink.

It is splendid to be a great writer, to put men into the frying pan of your words and make them pop like chestnuts.

Writers do not live one life, they live two. There is the living and then there is the writing. There is the second tasting.

A writer is a reader moved to emulation.

The writer is an explorer. Every step is an advance into a new land.

The writer of good will carries a lamp to illuminate the dark corners. Only that, nothing more—a tiny beam of light to show some hidden aspect of reality.

The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.

I look on that man as happy, who, when there is a question of success, looks into his work for a reply.

If a man love the labor of any trade, apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him.

I don’t like work—no man does—but I like what is in the work—the chance to find yourself.

Work is the grand cure of all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind.

Apt words have pow’r to swage The tumors of a troubled mind, And are as balm to fester’d wounds.

The beautiful word begets the beautiful deed.

Words are like leaves, some wither every year, And every year a younger race succeeds.

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.

Words easy to be understood do often hit the mark, when high and learned ones do only pierce the air.

By words the mind is winged.

Same material, apparently; but one is vivid, brief, and can do damage.

There’s a hell of a distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.

Humor does not include sarcasm, invalid irony, sardonicism, or any other form of cruelty. When these things are raised to a high point they can become wit.

As hand-to-hand combat has gradually disappeared . . . Americans have turned to the automobile to satisfy their love of direct aggression.

A car can massage organs which no masseur can reach. It is the one remedy for the disorders of the great sympathetic nervous system.

It is with wits as with razors, which are never so apt to cut those they are employed on as when they have lost their edge.

The greatest fault of a penetrating wit is to go beyond the mark.

There is no possibility of being witty without a little ill-nature; the malice in a good thing is the barb that makes it stick.

Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.

Wit is like caviar; it should be savored in small elegant proportions, and not spread about like marmalade.

It seems to me that the most universal revolutionary wish now or ever is a wish for heaven, a wish by a human being to be honored by angels for something other than beauty or usefulness.

Always leave something to wish for; otherwise you will be miserable from your very happiness.

while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.

If man could have half his wishes, he would double his troubles.

It is characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

Wisdom is ofttimes nearer when we stoop Than when we soar.

after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us.

The growth of wisdom may be gauged exactly by the diminution of ill temper.

Wisdom is to the soul what health is to the body.

All human wisdom is summed up in these two words— Wait and Hope .

It isn’t what a man has that constitutes wealth. No—it is to be satisfied with what one has; that is wealth.

Mixing one’s wines may be a mistake, but old and new wisdom mix admirably.

Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.

Wealth is not without its advantages, and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive.

Without the rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar.

All war is a symptom of man’s failure as a thinking animal.

Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.

I look upon the whole world as my fatherland, and every war has to me the horror of a family feud.

We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives, that it is inside ourselves.

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.