Quotes to inspire and reflect

The questions which one asks oneself begin, at last, to illuminate the world, and become one’s key to the experience of others.

The noblest question in the world is What Good may I do in it ?

Weakness on both sides is, as we know, the motto of all quarrels.

A sudden, bold, and unexpected question doth many times surprise a man and lay him open.

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

The test of a man or woman’s breeding is how they behave in a quarrel. Anybody can behave well when things are going smoothly.

The man without a purpose is like a ship without a rudder.

Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

Don’t get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one.

Problems are to the mind what exercise is to the muscles, they toughen and make strong. Problems make one better able to cope with life.

You can’t pray a lie.

There is at bottom only one problem in the world, and this is its name. How does one break through? How does one get into the open? How does one burst the cocoon and become a butterfly?

Your cravings as a human animal do not become a prayer just because it is God whom you ask to attend to them.

Nothing is so at odds with prayer as vanity.

To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrates his attention— on a landscape, a poem, a geometrical problem, an idol, or the True God— that he completely forgets his own ego and desires, he is praying.

Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.

One cares so little for the style in which one’s praises are written.

The primary benefit of practicing any art, whether well or badly, is that it enables one’s soul to grow.

People can be induced to swallow anything, provided it is sufficiently seasoned with praise.

The applause of a single human being is of a great consequence.

What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise— although the philosophers generally call it “recognition.”

Nothing so soon the drooping Spirits can raise, As Praises from the Men, whom all Men Praise.

the one that inspires all his deeds and designs, he would say, “I want to be praised.”

Power takes as ingratitude the writhing of its victims.

The real cause, the effective one, that makes men lose power is that they have become unworthy to exercise it.

Power is pleasure; and pleasure sweetens pain.

Those who have been once intoxicated with power . . . can never willingly abandon it.

The jaws of power are always opened to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.

Most people live . . . in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness . . . much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger.

The struggle is to synchronize the potential being with the actual being, to make a fruitful liaison between the man of yesterday and the man of tomorrow.

Many possessions, if they do not make a man better, are at least expected to make his children happier; and this pathetic hope is behind many exertions.

Potential has a shelf-life.

It is preoccupation with possession, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly.

Possessions possess.

Politics is a game of compromise . . . faith isn’t.

Possessions delude the human heart into believing that they provide security and a worry-free existence, but in truth they are the very cause of worry.

The garb of religion is the best cloak for power.

Politics, n . A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant.

For me, a poet is someone who is “in contact.” Someone through whom a current is passing.

To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession.

A poet’s autobiography is his poetry. Anything else can be only a footnote.

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.

Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet’s job.

Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.

Poetry is the purest of the language arts. It’s the tightest cage, and if you can get to sing in that cage it’s really really wonderful.

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.

A vein of Poetry exists in the hearts of all men.