Quotes to inspire and reflect

Heaven never helps the man who will not act.

To thine ownself be true.

If you keep saying things are going to be bad, you have a chance of being a prophet.

The purpose of life is a life of purpose.

Furthermore, we have not even to risk the journey alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.

Until you walk a mile in another man’s moccasins you can’t imagine the smell.

Every man hath a good and a bad angel attending on him in particular all his life long.

The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even, if you will, eccentricity. That is, something that can’t be feigned, faked, imitated; something even a seasoned imposter couldn’t be happy with.

Better than a thousand hollow words is one word that brings peace.

Man was formed for society and is neither capable of living alone, nor has the courage to do it.

Let it judge that nothing is either bad or good which can happen equally to the bad man and the good. For that which happens equally to him who lives contrary to nature and to him who lives according to nature, is neither according to nature nor contrary to nature.

Life itself is the most wonderful fairytale of all.

There’s no present. There’s only the immediate future and the recent past.

We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, never to be undone.

By nature, men are nearly alike; by practice, they get to be wide apart.

Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too.

How far would Moses have gone if he had taken a poll in Egypt?

The soul of man is immortal and imperishable.

Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.

True heroism consists in being superior to the ills of life, in whatever shape they may challenge us to combat.

I claim to be no more than an average man with below average capabilities. I have not the shadow of a doubt that any man or woman can achieve what I have if he or she would put forth the same effort and cultivate the same hope and faith.

Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.

The wise only possess ideas; the greater part of mankind are possessed by them.

Time ripens all things; no man is born wise.

Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has many not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws, to be led by permanent ideals that is what keeps a man patient when the world ignores him, and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him.

There are only two ways to live your life. One as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

One man cannot do right in one department of life whilst he is occupied in doing wrong in any other department. Life is one indivisible whole.

The mind, ever the willing servant, will respond to boldness, for boldness, in effect, is a command to deliver mental resources.

Society is joint action and cooperation in which each participant sees the other partner’s success as a means for the attainment of his own.

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world.

The sages do not consider that making no mistakes is a blessing. They believe, rather, that the great virtue of man lies in his ability to correct his mistakes and continually make a new man of himself.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellowmen; and along those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

I am a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn’t have the heart to let him down...

Men are apt to offend (‘tis true) where they find most goodness to forgive.

Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family; but to a solitary and an exile, his friends are everything.

Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offers us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.

Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles.

I only know how true it is: that love is a chain of love, as nature is a chain of life.

It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanisms of friendship.

Grief and tragedy and hatred are only for a time. Goodness, remembrance and love have no end.

A kiss makes the heart young again and wipes out the years.

Have no friends not equal to yourself.

Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it.

Love is the kind of illness that does not spare the intelligent or the dull.

Hatred does not cease in this world by hating, but by not hating; this is an eternal truth.