Quotes to inspire and reflect

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist

‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’—that is all

What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

For ever warm and still to be enjoyed,

Souls of poets dead and gone,

Thou still unravished bride of quietness,

Do not all charms fly

Love in a hut, with water and a crust,

She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue,

I saw their starved lips in the gloam

I met a lady in the meads

… La belle dame sans merci

I see a lily on thy brow

Oh, what can ail thee knight at arms

‘For cruel ’tis,’ said she,

Here are sweet peas, on tip-toe for a flight.

In drear nighted December

Ever let the fancy roam,

And they are gone: aye, ages long ago

Fanatics have their dreams, wherewith they weave

As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again.

And still she slept an azure-lidded sleep,

Trembling in her soft and chilly nest.

By degrees

St Agnes’ Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was!

The silver, snarling trumpets ’gan to chide.

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art.

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.

So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as means only.

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing can ever be made.

There is an imperative which commands a certain conduct immediately, without having as its condition any other purpose to be attained by it. This imperative is Categorical … This imperative may be called that of Morality.

Happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination.

I am never to act otherwise than so that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law.

Nothing in the world—indeed nothing even beyond the world—can possibly be conceived which could be called good without qualification except a good will.

Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more seriously reflection concentrates upon them: the starry heaven above me and the moral law within me.

I paint my own reality.

Someone must have traduced Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.

It’s often better to be in chains than to be free.

When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.

Mens sana in corpore sano.

… Duas tantum res anxius optat,

Travel light and you can sing in the robber’s face.

Tenet insanabile multos

Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes?

Nemo repente fuit turpissimus.

Rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cycno.