Quotes to inspire and reflect

To be poor without murmuring is difficult. To be rich without being proud is easy.

Be not penny-wise: riches have wings, and sometimes they fly away of themselves; sometimes they must be set flying to bring in more.

Let there be / wealth without tears; enough for / the wise man who will ask no further.

Riches attract the attention, consideration, and congratulations of mankind.

The sick are the greatest danger for the healthy; it is not from the strongest that harm comes to the strong, but from the weakest.

The weak can be terrible / because they try furiously to appear strong.

I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws.

We have allowed a soft sentimentalism to form the atmosphere we breathe. And in that kind of atmosphere, a diffuse desire to do good has become a substitute for tough-minded plans and operations—a substitute for strategy.

The weakest and most timorous are the most revengeful and implacable.

He is a fool who tries to match his strength with the stronger. / He will lose his battle, and with the shame will be hurt also.

The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

My life is like water that has passed the mill; it turns no wheel.

[A] nice thing about war—not that anything about war is nice, I guess—is that while it’s going on and you’re in it, you never worry about doing the right thing.

Water, thou hast no taste, no color, no odor; canst not be defined, art relished while ever mysterious. Not necessary to life, but rather life itself, thou fillest us with a gratification that exceeds the delight of the senses.

Nowadays, of course, just about our only solvent industry is the merchandising of death, bankrolled by our grandchildren.

Men appear to prefer ruining one another’s fortunes, and cutting each other’s throats about a few paltry villages, to extending the grand means of human happiness.

Every war is its own excuse. That’s why they’re all surrounded with ideals. That’s why they’re all crusades.

Of war men ask the outcome, not the cause.

To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love.

To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.

People who are vigorous and brutal often find war enjoyable, provided that it is a victorious war and that there is not too much interference with rape and plunder. This is a great help in persuading people that wars are righteous.

It is the savor of bread broken with comrades that makes us accept the values of war.

When the whole world turns clown, and paints itself red with its own heart’s blood instead of vermilion, it is something else than comic.

World War III will be triggered off not by suppressed nationalists seeking political independence, as happened the first time around when the Serbs at Sarajevo shot the heir to the Austrian throne, but by some semiliterate, whacked-out ”loner“ who lobs a rocket into a nuclear arsenal in order to impress Brooke Shields.

I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.

[W]e must love men more than things, and I admire and weep more for the soldiers than for the churches which were only the recording of an heroic gesture which today is reenacted at every moment.

The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views.

Can anything be more ridiculous than that a man should have the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of the water, and because his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have none with him?

War has become an affair of machines...and soldiers are little more than clever mechanics.

Against war it may be said that it makes the victor stupid and the vanquished revengeful.

We kill because were afraid of our own shadow, afraid that if we used a little common sense we’d have to admit that our glorious principles were wrong.

We think—although of course, now, we very seldom / Clearly think— / That the other side of War is Peace.

War may make a fool of man, but it by no means degrades him; on the contrary, it tends to exalt him, and its net effects are much like those of motherhood on women.

Blood is the god of war’s rich livery.

No man who witnessed the tragedies of the last war, no man who can imagine the'unimaginable possibilities of the next war can advocate war out of irritability or frustration or impatience.

One believes in the coming of war if one does not sufficiently abhor it.

She, Ruin, is strong and sound on her feet, and therefore / far outruns all Prayers, and wins into every country / to force men astray; and the Prayers follow as healers after her.

It is easier to lead men to combat and to stir up their passions than to temper them and urge them to the patient labors of peace.

War is an unmitigated evil. But it certainly does one good thing. It drives away fear and brings bravery to the surface.

War educates the senses, calls into action the will, perfects the physical constitution, brings men into such swift and close collision in critical moments that man measures man.

As peace is of all goodness, so war is an emblem, a hieroglyphic, of all misery.

War is a generality, so are the inevitabilities of war, including death.

There is no working middle course in wartime.

Boys and girls, / And women, that would groan to see a child / Pull off an insect’s leg, all read of war, / The best amusement for our morning meal.

There is nothing so subject to the inconstancy of fortune as war.

Clear undeniable right, clear undeniable might: either of these once ascertained puts an end to battle. All battle is a confused experiment to ascertain one and both of these.

The art of war is like the art of the courtesan— indeed, they might be called sisters, since both are the slaves of desperation.

A sedentary life is the real sin against the Holy Spirit. Only those thoughts that come by walking have any value.