Quotes to inspire and reflect

Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree

Teach us to care and not to care

Because I do not hope to turn again

Oh may I join the choir invisible

‘Character’ says Novalis, in one of his questionable aphorisms—‘character is destiny.’

The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.

Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.

The dead level of provincial existence.

Fred’s studies are not very deep … he is only reading a novel.

If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.

Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.

Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts, not to hurt others.

Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity; perhaps a tragic failure which found no sacred poet and sank unwept into oblivion.

Debasing the moral currency.

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.

A woman can hardly ever choose … she is dependent on what happens to her. She must take meaner things, because only meaner things are within her reach.

There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.

There is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life.

A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

We hand folks over to God’s mercy, and show none ourselves.

He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.

To my friends pictured within.

There is music in the air.

The distinction between past, present and future is only an illusion, however persistent.

Nationalism is an infantile sickness. It is the measles of the human race.

The grand aim of all science [is] to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest possible number of hypotheses or axioms.

If I would be a young man again and had to decide how to make my living, I would not try to become a scientist or scholar or teacher. I would rather choose to be a plumber or a peddler in the hope to find that modest degree of independence still available under present circumstances.

If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z . Work is x ; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.

Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind before you reach eighteen.

The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.

Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard, which has been communicated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future. Certain aspects of the situation which has arisen seem to call for watchfulness and, if necessary, quick action on the part of the Administration.

I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.

The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility … The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle.

God is subtle but he is not malicious.

I am convinced that He [God] does not play dice.

E = mc 2 .

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.

Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration.

For most of my life I refused to work at any problem unless its solution seemed to be capable of being put to commercial use.

But I can’t think for you

Come mothers and fathers,

All that foreign oil controlling American soil.

Señor, señor, do you know where we’re headin’?

Ah, but I was so much older then,

Hey! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me.

She knows there’s no success like failure