Quotes to inspire and reflect

Loneliness is the way by which destiny endeavors to lead man to himself.

I have only my own burden to bear.

Loneliness comes about when I am alone without being able . . . to keep myself company.

To turn events into ideas is the function of literature.

Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.

Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.

The use of literature is to afford us a platform whence we may command a view of our present life.

The reason literacy is important is that literature is the operating instructions. The best manual we have. The most useful guide to the country we’re visiting, life.

What a lost person needs is a map of the territory . . . so he can see where he is in relation to everything else. Literature is not only a mirror; it is a map, a geography of the mind.

Literature takes its revenge on reality by making it the slave of fiction.

All of man’s life among his kind is nothing other than a battle to seize the ears of others.

The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought , and attended to my answer.

Life is the funny thing that happens to you on the way to the grave.

Life is a near-death experience.

Life is a rainbow which also includes black.

Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.

Life is like a beautiful flirt, whom we love and to whom, finally, we grant every condition she imposes as long as she doesn’t leave us.

Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.

A family library is a breeding-place for character.

The warehouse of that memory is called the library.

A man’s library is a sort of harem.

The library is an arena of possibility, opening both a window into the soul and a door onto the world.

I had always imagined Paradise as a kind of library.

There is no royal road to learning; no short cut to the acquirement of any art.

A leader is a dealer in hope.

You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.

The real leader has no need to lead—he is content to point the way.

A leader . . . is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.

guard thy tongue from barking idly.

Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to higher sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.

Anger is momentary madness, so control your passion or it will control you.

Anger is loaded with information and energy.

I was irrevocably betrothed to laughter, the sound of which has always seemed to me to be the most civilized music in the world.

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns all clean.

There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they laugh at.

Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.

and observe for himself, and who has hunger for it.

Knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world.

Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.

Knowledge is happiness, because to have knowledge—broad, deep knowledge— is to know true ends from false, and lofty things from low.

Lips that taste of tears, they say Are the best for kissing.

implying in a subtle, complimentary way that she was as succulent as the small reptile he had for dinner the night before.

Ignorant kindness may have the effect of cruelty.

So many gods, so many creeds, So many paths that wind and wind, While just the art of being kind Is all the sad world needs.

Those undeserved joys which come uncalled and make us more pleased than grateful are they that sing.

When kindness has left people, even for a few moments, we become afraid of them, as if their reason had left them.

Joy’s smile is much closer to tears than laughter.

For happiness one needs security, but joy can spring like a flower even from the cliffs of despair.