Quotes
Quotes to inspire and reflect
Success is not greedy, as people think, but insignificant. That’s why it satisfies nobody.
6
For sufferers it is sweet to know before-hand clearly the pain that still remains for them.
7
Unless a man has been taught what to do with success after getting it, the achievement of it must inevitably leave him a prey to boredom.
8
When men succeed, even their neighbors think them wise.
7
Success / for the striver washes away the effort of striving.
5
Success abides longer among men / when it is planted by the hand of God.
8
The way to rise is to obey and please.
7
Failure makes people bitter and cruel. Success improves the character of the man.
11
The Way to secure success is to be more anxious about obtaining than about deserving it.
8
Some men succeed by what they know; some by what they do; and a few by what they are. .
8
The compensation of a very early success is a conviction that life is a romantic matter. In the best sense one stays young.
8
Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in.
5
Premature success gives one an almost mystical conception of destiny as opposed to will power—at its worst the Napoleonic delusion.
9
According to success do we gain a reputation for judgment.
7
A man who raises himself by degrees to wealth and power, contracts, in the course of this protracted labor, habits of prudence and restraint which he cannot afterwards shake off. A man cannot gradually enlarge his mind as he does his house.
7
There be many wise men that have secret hearts and transparent countenances.
8
The most important things must be said simply, for they are spoiled by bombast; whereas trivial things must be described grandly, for they are supported only by aptness of expression, tone and manner.
8
He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.
13
1 just couldn't make the grade as a hack—that, like everything else, requires a certain practiced excellence.
9
1 might say that what amateurs call a style is usually only the unavoidable awkwardness in first trying to make something that has not heretofore been made.
9
Manner is all in all, whate’er is writ, / The substitute for genius, sense, and wit.
12
Epithets, like pepper, / Give zest to what you write; / And if you strew them sparely, / They whet the appetite: / But if you lay them on too thick, / You spoil the matter quite!
7
Persons of slender intellectual stamina dread competition, as dwarfs are afraid of being run over in the street.
9
If poverty is the mother of all crimes, lack of intelligence is their father.
6
An ass may bray a good while before he shakes the stars down.
7
He that makes himself an ass must not take it ill if men ride him.
6
With stupidity and sound digestion man may front much.
8
Idiot, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.
4
So long as some are strong and some are weak, the weak will be driven to the wall.
11
The strongest iron, hardened in the fire, / most often ends in scraps and shatterings.
8
Strength and strength's will are the supreme ethic. All else are dreams from hospital beds, the sly, crawling goodness of sneaking souls.
9
Strong men can always afford to be gentle. Only the weak are intent on “giving as good as they get.”
5
Like strength is felt from hope, and from despair.
11
A weak man is just by accident. A strong but nonviolent man is unjust by accident.
8
It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak.
4
When is man strong until he feels alone?
11
The strength of even the strongest individual can always be overpowered by the many, who often will combine for no other purpose than to ruin strength precisely because of its peculiar independence.
6
Nobody can honestly think of himself as a strong character because, however successful he may be in overcoming them, he is necessarily aware of the doubts and temptations that accompany every important choice.
6
A story has been thought to its conclusion when it has taken its worst possible turn.
15
The high strength of men / knows no content with limitation.
8
Whoever has nothing to hope, let him despair of nothing.
6
Why, courage then! What cannot be avoided / Twere childish weakness to lament or fear.
11
Let a man accept his destiny, / No pity and no tears.
6
Be content with what you are, and wish not change; nor dread your last day, nor long for it.
4
We often excuse our own want of philanthropy by giving the name of fanaticism to the more ardent zeal of others.
12
Meanness is more in half-doing than in omitting acts of generosity.
8
Every society has a tendency to reduce its opponents to caricatures.
8
There’s nothing the world loves more than a readymade description which they can hang on to a man, and so save themselves all trouble in future.
10