Quotes to inspire and reflect

Every stink that fights the ventilator thinks it is Don Quixote.

No estimate is more in danger of erroneous calculation than those by which a man computes the force of his own genius.

We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all.

Self -deception once yielded to, all other deceptions follow naturally more and more.

The self is merely the lens through which we see others and the world, and if this lens is not clear of distortions, we cannot perceive others.

The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss— an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc.—is sure to be noticed.

There’s only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.

There is no such flatterer as is a man’s self.

A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale.

Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop.

The satirist who writes nothing but satire should write but little—or it will seem that his satire springs rather from his own caustic nature than from the sins of the world in which he lives.

A satirist is a man profoundly revolted by the society in which he lives. His rage takes the form of wit, ridicule, mockery.

The very essence of romance is uncertainty.

The difference between satire and humor is that the satirist shoots to kill while the humorist brings his prey back alive— often to release him again for another chance.

Love is a reality which is born in the fairy region of romance.

and filled with noble risks, is worth whole years of those mean observances of paltry decorum, in which men steal through existence, like sluggish waters through a marsh.

And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true .

All inquiries carry with them some element of risk.

To a certain extent, a little blindness is necessary when you undertake a risk.

The man who knows it can’t be done counts the risk, not the reward.

To conquer without risk is to triumph without glory.

but every day and every night of your life, they are eating at you.

Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment.

A work of art has an author and yet, when it is perfect, it has something which is essentially anonymous about it.

You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.

The creation of a work of art, like an act of love, is our one small “yes” at the center of a vast “no.”

A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left.

Blind alleys and garden paths leading nowhere are the principal hazards in research.

In all proper relationships there is no sacrifice of anyone to anyone.

Man is a knot, a web, a mesh into which relationships are tied.

The formula for achieving a successful relationship is simple: you should treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.

and is built on some of the same rules. The partners do not need to hold on tightly, because they move confidently in the same pattern.

My attachment has neither the blindness of the beginning— nor the microscopic accuracy of the close of such liaisons.

Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods.

Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own.

It is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin; another’s voice; another’s soul.

Study has been for me the sovereign remedy against all the disappointments of life. I have never known any trouble that an hour’s reading would not dissipate.

I don’t think we should read for instruction but to give our souls a chance to luxuriate.

To be apt in quotation is a splendid and dangerous gift. Splendid, because it ornaments a man’s speech with other men’s jewels; dangerous, for the same reason.

A good quotation must be a complete entity. It must be like a headline—sharp, clear, whole.

I pick up favorite quotations, and store them in my mind as ready armor, offensive or defensive, amid the struggle of this turbulent existence.

Questions are never indiscreet. Answers sometimes are.

We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers.

When we have arrived at the question, the answer is already near.

You start a question, and it’s like starting a stone. You sit quietly on top of a hill; and the stone goes, starting others.

There are no ugly questions except those clothed in condescension.

The words “question” and “quest” are cognates. Only through inquiry can we discover truth.

To ask the right question is already half the solution of a problem.