Quotes to inspire and reflect

Facilis descensus Averno:

Bella, horrida bella,

Varium et mutabile semper Femina.

Hos successus alit: possunt, quia posse videntur. These success encourages: they can because they think they can.

Quid non mortalia pectora cogis,

Dis aliter visum.

Equo ne credite, Teucri.

Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt.

Dux femina facti.

Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.

of Truman Capote ’s death:

Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris Italiam fato profugus Laviniaque venit Litora, multum ille et terris iactatus et alto Vi superum, saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram.

Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.

Il pleure dans mon coeur

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

I cannot help it that my pictures do not sell. Nevertheless the time will come when people will see that they are worth more than the price of the paint.

At the age of four with paper hats and wooden swords we’re all Generals. Only some of us never grow out of it.

God created man and, finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly.

I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who got there first.

Laughter … the most civilized music in the world.

The artist brings something into the world that didn’t exist before, and … he does it without destroying something else.

Neutrinos, they are very small

Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face.

America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.

The report of my death was an exaggeration.

La vida es duda,

Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world.

As to the Adjective: when in doubt, strike it out.

They spell it Vinci and pronounce it Vinchy; foreigners always spell better than they pronounce.

What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before.

The innocents abroad.

Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.

Hain’t we got all the fools in town on our side? and ain’t that a big enough majority in any town?

All kings is mostly rapscallions.

Whatever a man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself to this: Great God, grant that twice two be not four.

There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.

Always be sincere, even if you don’t mean it.

Nature is not a temple, but a workshop, and man’s the workman in it.

I didn’t fire him [General MacArthur] because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that’s not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail.

Wherever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

It’s a recession when your neighbour loses his job; it’s a depression when you lose yours.

A statesman is a politician who’s been dead 10 or 15 years.

If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

I never give them [the public] hell. I just tell the truth, and they think it is hell.

All the President is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway.

to reporters the day after his accession to the Presidency on the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt:

You [the Mensheviks] are pitiful isolated individuals; you are bankrupts; your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on—into the dustbin of history!

Old age is the most unexpected of all things that happen to a man.