Quotes to inspire and reflect

This noble ensample to his sheep he yaf,

Housbondes at chirche dore she hadde fyve.

Nowher so bisy a man as he ther nas,

And theron heng a brooch of gold ful sheene,

And Frenssh she spak ful faire and fetisly,

And smale foweles maken melodye,

When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split.

When in doubt have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.

A big hard-boiled city with no more personality than a paper cup.

Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.

Treat nature in terms of the cylinder, the sphere, the cone, all in perspective.

It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.

Diligence is the mother of good fortune, and idleness, its opposite, never led to good intention’s goal.

What I say is, patience, and shuffle the cards.

There are only two families in the world … the haves and the have-nots.

The Knight of the Doleful Countenance.

Your ashen hair Shulamith we shovel a grave in the air there you won’t lie too cramped.

Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland.

I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.

That is happiness: to be dissolved into something complete and great.

Where there is great love there are always miracles.

Over increasingly large areas of the United States, spring now comes unheralded by the return of the birds, and the early mornings are strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty of bird song.

But oh, beamish nephew, beware of the day,

If you want to inspire confidence, give plenty of statistics.

‘What’s the good of Mercator’s North Poles and Equators,

What I tell you three times is true.

It’s my own invention. the White Knight

No admittance till the week after next!

He’s an Anglo-Saxon Messenger—and those are Anglo-Saxon attitudes.

It’s as large as life, and twice as natural!

‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master—that’s all.’

You see it’s like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word.

‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’

There’s glory for you!

With a name like yours, you might be any shape, almost.

They gave it me,—for an un-birthday present.

The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday—but never jam today.

Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said,

But answer came there none.

‘Contrariwise,’ continued Tweedledee, ‘if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be: but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.’

Speak in French when you can’t think of the English for a thing.

Curtsey while you’re thinking what to say. It saves time.

Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!

‘And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

No! No! Sentence first—verdict afterwards.

‘It’s the oldest rule in the book,’ said the King.