Quotes to inspire and reflect

Cum dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum.

Roma locuta est; causa finita est.

Dilige et quod vis fac.

To many, total abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.

Audi partem alteram.

There is no salvation outside the church.

You command continence; give what you command, and command what you will.

Too late came I to love thee, O thou Beauty both so ancient and so fresh, yea too late came I to love thee. And behold, thou wert within me, and I out of myself, where I made search for thee.

When he was reading, he drew his eyes along over the leaves, and his heart searched into the sense, but his voice and tongue were silent.

Tolle lege, tolle lege.

Give me chastity and continency—but not yet!

You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.

Art is born of humiliation.

Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.

When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.

Man is a history-making creature who can neither repeat his past nor leave it behind.

Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

History to the defeated

A poet’s hope: to be,

A shilling life will give you all the facts.

I and the public know

But who can live for long

O what is that sound which so thrills the ear

Some thirty inches from my nose

Private faces in public places

Out on the lawn I lie in bed,

Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

This is the Night Mail crossing the Border,

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse

Even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course

About suffering they were never wrong,

Lay your sleeping head, my love,

Look, stranger, at this island now.

In the deserts of the heart

Time that with this strange excuse

Intellectual disgrace

In the nightmare of the dark

Poetry makes nothing happen.

The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.

You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:

To us he is no more a person

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

To save your world you asked this man to die:

The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews

The glacier knocks in the cupboard,

I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you