Quotes to inspire and reflect

Talent is a docile creature. It bows its head meekly while the world slips the collar over it. . . . But genius is always impatient of its harness; its wild blood makes it hard to train.

he has gloriously succeeded, and won a satisfaction and a triumph few men ever know.

Great talents are the most lovely and often the most dangerous fruits on the tree of humanity. They hang upon the most slender twigs that are easily snapped off.

A true talent delights the possessor first.

Talented people almost always know full well the excellence that is in them.

Ideas are a capital that bears interest only in the hands of talent.

Although tact is a virtue, it is very closely allied to certain vices; the line between tact and hypocrisy is a very narrow one. I think the distinction comes in the motive.

Talent is like electricity. We don’t understand electricity. We use it.

In the battle of existence, Talent is the punch; Tact is the clever footwork.

Don’t flatter yourselves that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. On the contrary, the nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become.

Silence is not always tact, and it is tact that is golden, not silence.

Tact consists in knowing how far to go in going too far.

it is the universal or divine blood that flows through us all.

The austere principles of tact tell the tongue to keep away from the aching thought.

The scene of suffering is a scene of joy when the suffering is past; and the silent reminiscence of hardships departed, is sweeter than the presence of delight

To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and the willingness to remain vulnerable.

When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool.

Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state.

We mount to heaven mostly on the ruins of our cherished schemes, finding our failures were successes.

Success is more dangerous than failure, the ripples break over a wider coastline.

If a man constantly aspires, is he not elevated?

He who bears in his heart a cathedral to be built is already victorious.

The barriers are not erected which can say to aspiring talents and industry, “Thus far and no farther.”

One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.

Every success is usually an admission ticket to a new set of decisions.

One day it happens. Success happens and it catches you by surprise. One day you are a signature, next day, you are an autograph.

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.

Success is counted sweetest By those who ne’er succeed.

Success took me to her bosom like a maternal boa constrictor.

Success is sweet, the sweeter if long delayed and attained through manifold struggles and defeats.

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.

A stupid person’s notions and feelings may confidently be inferred from those which prevail in the circle by which the person is surrounded.

Nature delights in punishing stupid people.

What distresses me is to see that human genius has limits and human stupidity none.

Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results.

Readiness to answer all questions is the infallible sign of stupidity.

I’ve never forgotten for long at a time that living is struggle. I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for—whether it’s a field, or a home, or a country.

Once you fully apprehend the vacuity of a life without struggle you are equipped with the basic means of salvation.

The struggle alone pleases us, not the victory. . . . We never seek things for themselves, but for the search.

We take no delight in existence except when we are struggling for something.

One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.

It’s better to lose some of the battles in the struggles for your dreams than to be defeated without ever knowing what you’re fighting for.

Beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty. The relation is roughly that of courage to war.

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words, it is war minus the shooting.

All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.

Speech belongs half to the speaker, half to the listener.

Speak clearly, if you speak at all; Carve every word before you let it fall.

I learn immediately from any speaker how much he has already lived, through the poverty or the splendor of his speech.