Quotes to inspire and reflect

Through zeal, knowledge is gotten; through lack of zeal, knowledge is lost.

Our inheritance of well founded, slowly conceived codes of honor, morals and manners, the passionate convictions which so many hundreds of millions share together of freedom and justice, are far more precious to us than anything which scientific discoveries can bestow.

If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.

In the final analysis there is no solution to man’s progress but the day’s honest work, the day’s honest decisions, the day’s generous utterances and the day’s good deed.

Nothing will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must first be overcome.

Nature does not bestow virtue; to be good is an art.

Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone.

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.

Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.

Your own mind is a sacred enclosure into which nothing harmful can enter except by your permission.

Dream no small dreams, for they have no power to stir the souls of men.

I’ve learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.

He is the freeman whom the truth makes free.

Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher’s the poet’s equal there.

But what is Hope? Nothing but the paint on the face of Existence; the least touch of truth rubs it off, and then we see what a hollow-cheeked harlot we have got hold of.

A dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant may see farther than a giant himself.

Loyalty is still the same, Whether it win or lose the game; True as a dial to the sun, Although it be not shined upon.

Justice is being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.

The illuminable, silent, never-resting thing called Time, rolling, rushing on, swift, silent, like an all-embracing oceantide, on which we and all the universe swim like exhalations, like apparitions which are, and then are not: this is forever very literally a miracle; a thing to strike us dumb, for we have no word to speak about it.

Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.

Justice while she winks at crimes, stumbles on innocence sometimes.

My mistakes are my life.

Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems—but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems incredible.

He that first cries out "Stop thief!", is often he that has stolen the treasure.

The imagination is man’s power over nature.

Great wisdom is generous; petty wisdom is contentious. Great speech is impassioned, small speech cantankerous.

There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.

It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.

The bird of paradise alights only upon the hand that does not grasp.

He that will not sail till all dangers are over must never put to sea.

The fact is, it seems, that the most you can hope is to be a little less, in the end, the creature you were in the beginning, and the middle.

Many individuals have, like uncut diamonds, shining qualities beneath a rough exterior.

In every great time there is some one idea at work which is more powerful than any other, and which shapes the events of the time and determines their ultimate issues.

You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips.

Is the oak better than the acorn which is its fullness and completion?

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your BELIEF will help create the fact.

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in, forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day, begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it.

Have confidence that you can draw the best, not the worst, to yourself.

Let us become the change we seek in this world.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.

I find it fascinating that most people plan their vacations with better care than they plan their lives. Perhaps that is because escape is easier than change.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream.

The mind ought sometimes to be diverted, that it may return the better to thinking.

Wise people, even though all laws were abolished, would still lead the same life.

The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.