Quotes to inspire and reflect

Bear-baiting was esteemed heathenish and unchristian: the sport of it, not the inhumanity, gave offence.

No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish.

Of all the animals with which this globe is peopled, there is none towards whom nature seems, at first sight, to have exercis’d more cruelty than towards man, in the numberless wants and necessities, with which she has loaded him, and in the slender means, which she affords to the relieving these necessities.

In contriving any system of government, and fixing the several checks and controuls of the constitution, every man ought to be supposed a knave , and to have no other end, in all his actions, than private interest.

We speak not strictly and philosophically when we talk of the combat of passion and of reason. Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.

Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled. From that divine tear and from that human smile is derived the grace of present civilization.

The first symptom of true love in a young man is timidity; in a young woman, it is boldness.

On résiste à l’invasion des armées; on ne résiste pas à l’invasion des idées .

Waterloo! Waterloo! Waterloo! Dismal plain!

Le mot, c’est le Verbe, et le Verbe, c’est Dieu .

Oh! que ne suis-je de pierre comme toi!

Les États Unis d’Europe .

Asile!

Stilled legendary depth:

The jaws’ hooked clamp and fangs

Pike, three inches long, perfect

Cold, delicately as the dark snow,

I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.

Grey silent fragments

“It’s powerful,” he said.

I swear to the Lord

As I learn from you,

It is the duty of the younger Negro artist . . . to change through the force of his art that old whispering “I want to be white,” hidden in the aspirations of his people, to “Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro—and beautiful!”

Hold fast to dreams

They’ll see how beautiful I am

A genius is a man who takes the lemons that Fate hands him and starts a lemonade-stand with them.

[President William] McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter & did not ask, “Where is he at?” By the Eternal! there is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze & the statue placed in every college of the land. It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies: do the thing—” Carry a message to Garcia!”

Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona

Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero .

Ille potens sui

Multa fero, ut placem genus irritabile vatum .

Belua multorum es capitum .

Multa renascentur quae iam cecidere, cadentque

Laudator temporis acti .

If you could say it in words there’d be no reason to paint.

His foe was folly & his weapon wit.

The wine-dark sea.

[ Of Odysseus :] Tell me, muse, of the man of many resources who wandered far and wide after he had sacked the holy citadel of Troy, and he saw the cities and learned the thoughts of many men.

The most preferable of evils.

From his tongue flowed speech sweeter than honey.

Speaking, he addressed her winged words.

Sing, goddess, the wrath of Peleus’ son Achilles, a destroying wrath which brought upon the Achaeans myriad woes, and sent forth to Hades most valiant souls of heroes.

Near and

Nothing is more precious than independence and liberty.

Men and women, old and young, regardless of creeds, political parties, or nationalities, all the Vietnamese must stand up to fight the French colonialists to save the fatherland. Those who have rifles will use their rifles; those who have swords will use their swords; those who have no swords will use spades, hoes, or sticks.

[ Remark, ca. 1946 :] It is better to sniff the French dung for a while than eat China’s all our lives.

All men are created equal; they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples on the earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and free.

[ “Last words” :] Death, is a leap into the dark.