Quotes to inspire and reflect

You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.

No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.

The quietly pacifist peaceful always die

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the colour purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.

Did this happen to your mother? Did your sister throw up a lot?

Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise.

This is no time for making new enemies.

I who have cursed

The composition of a tragedy requires testicles.

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

The art of government is to make two-thirds of a nation pay all it possibly can pay for the benefit of the other third.

It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it’s a pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their colour.

We owe respect to the living; to the dead we owe only truth.

Quoi que vous fassiez, écrasez l’infâme, et aimez qui vous aime.

God is on the side not of the heavy battalions, but of the best shots.

Governments need both shepherds and butchers.

It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.

History is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.

This agglomeration which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.

Si Dieu n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer.

All styles are good except the boring kind.

The secret of being a bore … is to tell everything.

Superstition sets the whole world in flames; philosophy quenches them.

Common sense is not so common.

Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien.

[Men] use thought only to justify their injustices, and speech only to conceal their thoughts.

Il faut cultiver notre jardin.

Dans ce pays-ci il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres.

If we do not find anything pleasant, at least we shall find something new.

These two nations have been at war over a few acres of snow near Canada, and … they are spending on this fine struggle more than Canada itself is worth.

Sed fugit interea, fugit inreparabile tempus.

Dans ce meilleur des mondes possibles … tout est au mieux.

Ter sunt conati imponere Pelio Ossam Scilicet atque Ossae frondosum involvere Olympum;

Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas. Lucky is he who has been able to understand the causes of things.

Ultima Thule.

Omnia vincit Amor: et nos cedamus Amori

Nunc scio quid sit Amor.

Non omnia possumus omnes.

Ambo florentes aetatibus, Arcades ambo,

Ultima Cumaei venit iam carminis aetas;

Experto credite.

Latet anguis in herba.

Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo.

Macte nova virtute, puer, sic itur ad astra.

Geniumque loci primamque deorum Tellurem Nymphasque et adhuc ignota precatur Flumina.

Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento (Hae tibi erunt artes), pacique imponere morem, Parcere subiectis et debellare superbos.

Stabant orantes primi transmittere cursum

Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus