Quotes to inspire and reflect

I’ll see you again,

[ To T. E. Lawrence when the latter was a corporal in the Royal Air Force :] Dear 338171 (May I call you 338?).

I have never been able to take anything seriously after eleven o’clock in the morning.

But I believe that since my life began

What if I’m 60 years old and not married,

Ah, yet well I know that were a woman possible as I am possible

It’s just that I see love as odd as wearing shoes—

O God, and the wedding! All her family and her friends

Va, je ne te hais point .

[Reply upon being asked “What could he have done when it was one against three?”:] Qu’il mourût .

The center of the earth is not the center of the universe, but only of gravity and of the lunar sphere. All the spheres revolve about the sun as their mid-point, and therefore the sun is the center of the universe.

Va, cours, vole et nous venge .

It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute publick opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny.

I am on the hilltop, and must go down into the valley; and when Uncas follows in my footsteps, there will no longer be any of the blood of the Sagamores, for my boy is the last of the Mohicans.

The perfect delight of writing tales where so many lives come and go at the cost of one which slips imperceptibly away.

[ On wartime :] Reality, as usual, beats fiction out of sight.

The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement—but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims.

I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more—the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort—to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires—and expires, too soon, too soon—before life itself.

Only a moment; a moment of strength, of romance, of glamour—of youth! . . . A flick of sunshine upon a strange shore, the time to remember, the time for a sigh, and—good-bye!—Night—Good-bye . . . !”

The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky—seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.

I don’t like work—no man does—but I like

No fear can stand up to hunger, no patience can wear it out, disgust simply does not exist where hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs, and what you may call principles, they are less than chaff in a breeze.

To the destructive element submit yourself.

That faculty of beholding at a hint the face of his desire and the shape of his dream, without which the earth would know no lover and no adventurer.

The problem of life seemed too voluminous for the narrow limits of human speech, and by common consent it was abandoned to the great sea that had from the beginning enfolded it in its immense grip; to the sea that knew all, and would in time infallibly unveil to each the wisdom hidden in all the errors, the certitude that lurks in doubts, the realm of safety and peace beyond the frontiers of sorrow and fear.

One writes only half the book; the other half is with the reader.

But the artist appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom; to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition—and, therefore, more permanently enduring. He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives: to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain.

A work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.

O fie Miss, you must not kiss and tell.

It’s only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose.

No mask like open truth to cover lies,

By nature men are alike. Through practice they have become far apart.

If we are not yet able to serve man, how can we serve spiritual beings? . . . If we do not yet know about life how can we know about death?

To go too far is the same as not to go far enough.

The Way of our Master is none other than conscientiousness of altruism.

Man is born with uprightness. If one loses it he will be lucky if he escapes with his life.

A ruler who governs his state by virtue is like the north polar star, which remains in its place while all the other stars revolve around it.

A superior man in dealing with the world is not for anything or against anything. He follows righteousness as the standard.

Is it not a pleasure to learn and to repeat or practice from time to time what has been learned? Is it not delightful to have friends coming from afar? Is one not a superior man if he does not feel hurt even though he does not feel recognized?

Les femmes libres ne sont pas des femmes . Free women are not women at all.

Iago’s soliloquy—the motive-hunting of motiveless malignity.

If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found the flower in his hand when he awoke—Aye! and what then?

Shakespeare . . . is of no age—nor of any religion, or party or profession. The body and substance of his works came out of the unfathomable depths of his own oceanic mind.

You abuse snuff! Perhaps it is the final cause of the human nose.

The happiness of life, on the contrary, is made up of minute fractions—the little, soon-forgotten charities of a kiss, a smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment in the disguise of playful raillery, and the countless other infinitesimals of pleasurable thought and genial feeling.

Beneath this sod

Evidences of Christianity! I am weary of the word. Make a man feel the want of it; rouse him, if you can, to the self-knowledge of his need of it; and you may safely trust it to his own Evidence.

Exclusively of the abstract sciences, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms; and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism.