Quotes to inspire and reflect

Just for a handful of silver he left us,

‘You’re wounded!’ ‘Nay,’ the soldier’s pride

I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;

How they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix.

Shakespeare unlocked his heart,’ once more!

Did Shakespeare? If so, the less Shakespeare he!

Oh, to be in England

‘With this same key

That low man seeks a little thing to do,

If you get simple beauty and naught else,

… Progress, man’s distinctive mark alone,

Open my heart and you will see

How sad and bad and mad it was—

Stung by the splendour of a sudden thought.

Oh, the little more, and how much it is!

Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,

The grand Perhaps!

When earth breaks up and heaven expands,

I shall but love thee better after death.

One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,

I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and if God choose,

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

What was he doing, the great god Pan,

And lips say, ‘God be pitiful,’

Earth’s crammed with heaven,

Abortions will not let you forget.

History repeats itself; historians repeat one another.

Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour.

If I should die, think only this of me:

Unkempt about those hedges blows

Stands the Church clock at ten to three?

Sweet wine of youth.

These laid the world away; poured out the red

But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.

There’s none of these so lonely and poor of old,

Be a governess! Better be a slave at once!

Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!

Reader, I married him.

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.

The wish to hurt, the momentary intoxication with pain, is the loophole through which the pervert climbs into the minds of ordinary men.

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.

The essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer.

The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation … The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.

What is robbing a bank compared with founding a bank?

Oh, the shark has pretty teeth, dear,

The Falklands thing was a fight between two bald men over a comb.

The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error.