Quotes to inspire and reflect

The word liberty in the mouth of Mr. [Daniel] Webster sounds like the word love in the mouth of a courtesan.

Standing on the bare ground, my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part and particle of God.

Government exists to defend the weak and the poor and the injured party; the rich and the strong can better take care of themselves.

The hand that rounded Peter’s dome,

The less government we have the better,—the fewer laws, and the less confided power.

On the other side, the conservative party, composed of the most moderate, able, and cultivated part of the population, is timid, and merely defensive of property. It vindicates no right, it aspires to no real good, it brands no rime, it proposes no generous policy, it does not build, nor write, nor cherish the arts, nor foster religion, nor establish schools, nor encourage science, nor emancipate the slave, nor befriend the poor, or the Indian, or the immigrant.

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

The wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand which perishes in the twisting; that the State must follow and not lead the character and progress of the citizen; . . . that the form of government which prevails is the expression of what cultivation exists in the population which permits it. The law is only a memorandum.

Never strike a king unless you are sure you shall kill him.

For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.

The lesson which these observations convey is, Be, and not seem. Let us acquiesce. Let us take our bloated nothingness out of the path of the divine circuits. Let us unlearn our wisdom of the world. Let us lie low in the Lord’s power, and learn that truth alone makes rich and great.

A man may love a paradox without either losing his wit or his honesty.

But do your thing, and I shall know you.

A man Caesar is born, and for ages after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to his genius that he is confounded with virtue and the possible of man. An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.

Almost all people descend to meet.

All history becomes subjective; in other words there is properly no history; only biography.

Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views, which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books.

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.

’Tis a queer life, and the only humor proper to it seems quiet astonishment. Others laugh, weep, sell, or proselyte. I admire.

La Terre est Bleue Comme une Orange .

Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies,

I am an invisible man. . . . I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.

America is woven of many strands; I would recognize them and let it so remain. . . . Our fate is to become one, and yet many—This is not prophecy, but description.

[ On The Waste Land:] Various critics have done me the honor to interpret the poem in terms of criticism of the contemporary world, have considered it, indeed, as an important bit of social criticism. To me it was only the relief of a personal and wholly insignificant grouse against life; it is just a piece of rhythmical grumbling.

A condition of complete simplicity

We only live, only suspire

Consumed by either fire or fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.

First, the cold friction of expiring sense

Our concern was speech, and speech impelled us

In the uncertain hour before the morning

Music heard so deeply

Who are only undefeated

We must be still and still moving

Not fare well,

Old men ought to be explorers.

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older

And so each venture

For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

In spite of that, we call this Friday good.

The whole earth is our hospital

When you notice a cat in profound meditation,

That was a way of putting it—not very satisfactory:

How unpleasant to meet Mr. Eliot!

Even among these rocks,

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices

Wavering between the profit and the loss