Quotes to inspire and reflect

Thus methinks should men of judgement frame

I count religion but a childish toy,

My men, like satyrs grazing on the lawns,

Where both deliberate, the love is slight;

O lente lente currite noctis equi .

Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven,

I shot the sheriff

Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it.

Get up, stand up

Whenever I prepare for a journey I prepare as though for death. Should I never return, all is in order.

We come out of the dark and go into the dark again, and in between lie the experiences of our life.

A man’s dying is more the survivors’ affair than his own.

Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunderstorm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols.

Speech is civilisation itself. The word, even the most contradictory word, preserves contact—it is silence which isolates.

True reconciliation does not consist in merely forgetting the past.

Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice.

No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.

I have dedicated my life to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for, and to see realized. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

L’art est un anti-destin.

La condition humaine.

La chair est triste, hélas! et j’ai lu tous les livres.

Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune.

If we must die, let it not be like hogs

The prince must be a fox, therefore, to recognize the traps and a lion to frighten the wolves.

It is much safer for a prince to be feared than loved, if he is to fail in one of the two.

Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries—for heavy ones they cannot.

Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.

Let me die a youngman’s death

We were saying yesterday …

A war can perhaps be won single-handedly.

I have a wife, I have sons: we have given so many hostages to the fates.

Much of … his global thinking is, no matter how you slice it, still globaloney.

Thinking nothing done while anything remained to be done.

There comes Poe with his raven like Barnaby

Houston, we’ve had a problem.

The Analytical Engine weaves algebraic patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves.

Gentlemen prefer blondes.

So I really think that American gentlemen are the best after all, because kissing your hand may make you feel very very good but a diamond and safire bracelet lasts forever.

Something attempted, something done,

It was the schooner Hesperus,

Under a spreading chestnut tree

One if by land and two if by sea;

Dark behind it rose the forest,

Listen, my children, and you shall hear

A Lady with a Lamp shall stand

By the shore of Gitche Gumee,

Lives of great men all remind us

Let us, then, be up and doing,