Quotes to inspire and reflect

Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate , more important far than they all.

It is not what a man outwardly has or wants that constitutes the happiness or misery of him. Nakedness, hunger, distress of all kinds, death itself have been cheerfully suffered, when the heart was right. It is the feeling of injustice that is insupportable to all men.

It were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible; and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five.

There is no heroic poem in the world but is at bottom a biography, the life of a man; also, it may be said, there is no life of a man, faithfully recorded, but is a heroic poem of its sort, rhymed or unrhymed.

[ Comment in television discussion about writers of the “Beat Generation” :] That isn’t writing at all, it’s typing.

I didn’t want to harm the man. I thought he was a very nice gentleman. Soft-spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat.

Rossum’s Universal Robots.

It was a terrible, strange-looking hotel. But Little Sunshine stayed on: it was his rightful home, he said, for if he went away, as he had once upon a time, other voices, other rooms, voices lost and clouded, strummed his dreams.

Follow your bliss.

The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other very well.

And you say, “Just a moment, I’ve almost finished If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino.”

You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler .

I speak and speak, but the listener retains only the words he is expecting. . . . It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.

The unconscious is the ocean of the unsayable, of what has been expelled from the land of language, removed as a result of ancient prohibitions.

[ Proverb quoted by Caesar as he crossed the Rubicon River in defiance of restrictions on his army :] The die is cast.

I had rather be the first man among those fellows than the second man in Rome.

I wished my wife to be not so much as suspected.

The tribe of Barabbas was unquestionably a bookseller.

“Who killed John Keats?”

John Keats, who was kill’d off by one critique, Just as he really promis’d something great . . .’Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle, Should let itself be snuffed out by an article.

Such writing [John Keats’s] is a sort of mental masturbation—he is always f—gg—g his imagination .—I don’t mean that he is indecent but viciously soliciting his own ideas into a state which is neither poetry nor any thing else but a Bedlam vision produced by raw pork and opium.

I have been more ravished myself than any body since the Trojan war.

But who, alas! can love, and then be wise?

And Coleridge, too, has lately taken wing, But, like a hawk encumbered with his hood, Explaining metaphysics to the nation—I wish he would explain his explanation.

Here, where the sword united nations drew, Our countrymen were warring on that day!

There were his young barbarians all at play, There was their Dacian mother—he, their sire, Butchered to make a Roman holiday.

I wonder how the deuce any body could make such a world; for what purpose dandies, for instance, were ordained—and kings—and fellows of colleges—and women of “a certain age”—and many men of any age—and myself, most of all!

When one subtracts from life infancy (which is vegetation),—sleep, eating, and swilling—buttoning and unbuttoning—how much remains of downright existence? The summer of a dormouse.

God is Love—I dare say! But what a mischievous devil Love is!

[ Of Annabella Milbanke, Byron’s future wife and an amateur mathematician :] My Princess of Parallelograms.

There are two classes of people in this world, those who sin, and those who are sinned against; if a man must belong to either, he had better belong to the first than to the second.

A man first quarrels with his father about three-quarters of a year before he is born.

The family is a survival of the principle which is more logically embodied in the compound animal. . . . I would do with the family among mankind what nature has done with the compound animal, and confine it to the lower and less progressive races.

Sensible people get the greater part of their own dying done during their own lifetime. A man at five and thirty should no more regret not having had a happier childhood than he should regret not having been born a prince of the blood.

Some boys are born stupid; some achieve stupidity; and some have stupidity thrust upon them.

Stowed away in a Montreal lumber room The Discobolus standeth and turneth his face to the wall;

For Justice, though she’s painted blind, Is to the weaker side inclined.

[ Explaining why he did not consult his father, former President George H. W. Bush, on the decision to go to war with Iraq in 2003 :] There is a higher father that I appeal to.

[ Of requests to give Iraq more time to disarm :] This looks like a rerun of a bad movie and I’m not interested in watching it.

When I take action, I’m not going to fire a two-million-dollar missile at a ten-dollar empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It’s going to be decisive.

I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family.

[ Of his youthful indiscretions :] When I was young and irresponsible I was young and irresponsible.

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.

I’m the decider.

I’m the master of low expectations.

[ On Iraqi militants attacking U.S. forces :] My answer is bring them on.

My fellow Americans: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.

Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within 48 hours. Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict, commenced at a time of our choosing.