Quotes to inspire and reflect

And come he slow, or come he fast,

O, young Lochinvar is come out of the west,

O Caledonia! stern and wild,

O! many a shaft, at random sent,

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,

Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung.

It is the secret sympathy,

If thou would’st view fair Melrose aright,

Yet seemed that tone, and gesture bland,

And the stern joy which warriors feel

I always have a quotation for everything—it saves original thinking.

The heavy bear who goes with me,

‘He’s a cheery old card,’ grunted Harry to Jack

Here was the world’s worst wound. And here with pride

Does it matter?—losing your sight? …

The song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath,

I hate victims who respect their executioners.

Hell is other people.

Human life begins on the far side of despair.

I am condemned to be free.

Man is a useless passion.

When the rich wage war it’s the poor who die.

Existence precedes and rules essence.

Some say an army of cavalry or of infantry or a fleet of ships is the most beautiful thing on the black earth. But I say it is whatever one loves.

Just as the sweet-apple reddens on the high branch, high on the highest, and the apple-pickers missed it, or rather did not miss it out, but could not reach it.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.

Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work.

Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.

Poetry is the achievement of the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.

There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.

Experience shows us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking together in the same direction.

We cannot tear out a single page of our life, but we can throw the book in the fire.

Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

It was quite the most incredible event that has ever happened to me in my life. It was almost as incredible as if you fired a 15–inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you.

We haven’t got the money, so we’ve got to think!

All science is either physics or stamp collecting.

If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.

‘Change’ is scientific, ‘progress’ is ethical; change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy.

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty.

The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.

Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty—a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture.

Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.