Quotes
Quotes to inspire and reflect
People seem to think there is something inherently noble and virtuous in the desire to go for a walk.
6
These feet have walked ten thousand miles working for white folks and another ten thousand keeping up with colored.
7
The philosophy of waiting is sustained by all the oracles of the universe.
6
Half the agony of living is waiting.
7
The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.
5
An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood: a mud bath for every soul concerned in it.
7
Voting is simply a way of determining which side is the stronger without putting it to the test of fighting.
7
Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.
6
Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets.
5
There are more Negroes in jail with me than there are on the voting rolls.
5
Those who stay away from the election think that one vote will do no good: Tis but one step more to think one vote will do no harm.
5
At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper—no amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of the point.
8
When men are rightly occupied, their amusement grows out of their work, as the colour-petals out of a fruitful flower.
5
The artisan or scientist or the follower of whatever discipline who has the habit of comparing himself not with other followers but with the discipline itself will have a lower opinion of himself, the more excellent he is.
7
The player envies only the player, the poet envies only the poet.
6
Every man has his own vocation. The talent is the call.
7
Nature drives with a loose rein and vitality of any sort can blunder through many a predicament in which reason would despair.
4
Human vitality is so exuberant that in the sorriest desert it still finds a pretext for glowing and trembling.
9
A great mind is one that can forget or look beyond itself.
6
The difference between the university graduate and the autodidact lies not so much in the extent of knowledge as in the extent of vitality and self-confidence.
9
If a man has no vices, he's in great danger of making vices about his virtues, and there’s a spectacle.
6
No man sees far; the most see no farther than their noses.
7
When I religiously confess myself to myself, I find that the best virtue I have has in it some tincture of vice.
7
I never was so rapid in my virtue but my vice kept up with me.
5
If virtue cannot shine bright, but by the conflict of contrary appetites, shall we then say that she cannot subsist without the assistance of vice, and that it is from her that she derives her reputation and honor?
6
There is a capacity of virtue in us, arid there is a capacity of vice to make your blood creep.
5
Virtue between men is a commerce of good actions: he who has no part in this commerce must not be reckoned.
6
Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.
5
I have seen men incapable of the sciences, but never any incapable of virtue.
3
When men grow virtuous in their old age, they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil’s leavings.
8
Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful.
11
Nothing can be more puritanical in application than the virtues.
7
We know that the exercise of virtue should be its own reward, and it seems to follow that the enduring of it on the part of the patient should be its own punishment.
7
The glory that goes with wealth and beauty is fleeting and fragile; virtue is a possession glorious and eternal.
7
The strength of a man’s virtue must not be measured by his efforts, but by his ordinary life.
8
It is a distinction to have many virtues, but a hard lot.
7
Every man prefers virtue, when there is not some strong incitement to transgress its precepts.
5
Virtue cannot be followed but for herself, and if one sometimes borrows her mask to some other purpose, she presently pulls it away again.
6
The measure of any man’s virtue is what he would do, if he had neither the laws nor public opinion, nor even his own prejudices, to control him.
6
Even virtue followed beyond reason’s rule / May stamp the just man knave, the sage a fool.
9
Virtue is despised if it be seen in a threadbare cloak.
5
That virtue which requires to be ever guarded is scarce worth the sentinel.
11
The order of things consents to virtue.
5
He hath no mean portion of virtue that loveth it in another.
5
The highest virtue is always against the law.
6
The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough.
4
Seldom indeed does human virtue rise / From trunk to branch.
15
Who knows his virtue’s name or place, hath none.
8