Quotes to inspire and reflect

All violent feelings … produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the ‘Pathetic Fallacy’.

To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion—all in one.

Life without industry is guilt, and industry without art is brutality.

No person who is not a great sculptor or painter can be an architect. If he is not a sculptor or painter, he can only be a builder.

I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face.

It means everything—it means freedom.

One of the things a writer is for is to say the unsayable, speak the unspeakable and ask difficult questions.

What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.

The follies which a man regrets most, in his life, are those which he didn’t commit when he had the opportunity.

Somehow a bachelor never quite gets over the idea that he is a thing of beauty and a boy forever.

Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains.

A husband is what is left of a lover, after the nerve has been extracted.

When I am dead, my dearest,

Doctor, my doctor, what do you say, LET’S g PUT THE ID BACK IN YID!

Better by far you should forget and smile

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?

Come to me in the silence of the night;

In the bleak mid-winter

I have got such a bully pulpit!

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism.

One of our defects as a nation is a tendency to use what have been called ‘weasel words’. When a weasel sucks eggs the meat is sucked out of the egg. If you use a ‘weasel word’ after another, there is nothing left of the other.

We stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.

A man who is good enough to shed his blood for the country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards.

The men with the muck-rakes are often indispensable to the well-being of society; but only if they know when to stop raking the muck.

Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.

I am as strong as a bull moose and you can use me to the limit.

I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life.

The work, my friend, is peace. More than an end of this war—an end to the beginnings of all wars.

Books can not be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can abolish memory … In this war, we know, books are weapons. And it is a part of your dedication always to make them weapons for man’s freedom.

Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and

We must be the great arsenal of democracy.

Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.

We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics.

I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.

I have seen war … I hate war.

We face the arduous days that lie before us in the warm courage of national unity.

I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people.

I cannot believe that war is the best solution. No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.

The forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.

Is there anything we can do for you? For you are the one in trouble now.

Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, à la chandelle,

I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,

Ce qui n’est pas clair n’est pas français.

A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu: voyelles,

A l’aurore, armés d’une ardente patience, nous entrerons aux splendides villes.