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 smale foweles maken melodye,

And Frenssh she spak ful faire and fetisly,

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Knight of the Doleful Countenance.

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

Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland.

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

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.

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.

Where there is great love there are always miracles.

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.

No admittance till the week after next!

It’s my own invention. the White Knight

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

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

‘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.

There’s glory for you!

‘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.’

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

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

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

But answer came there none.

‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said,

‘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.

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!

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

‘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.

Begin at the beginning,’ the King said, gravely, ‘and go on till you come to the end: then stop.