Quotes to inspire and reflect

The finished man of the world must eat of every apple once.

The mark of the man of the world is absence of pretension.

Our genes keep unfolding as long as we live. Harry tastes in his teeth a sourness that offended him on his father’s breath. Poor Pop. His face yellowed like a dried apricot at the end.

My father provided; he gathered things to himself and let them fall upon the world; my clothes, my food, my luxurious hopes had fallen to me from him, and for the first time his death seemed, even at its immense stellar remove of impossibility, a grave and dreadful threat.

Any father whose son raises his hand against him is guilty: of having produced a son who raised his hand against him.

How easily a father's tenderness is recalled, and how quickly a son’s offenses vanish at the slightest word of repentance!

There must always be a struggle between a father and son, while one aims at power and the other at independence.

Greatness of name in the father oftentimes overwhelms the son; they stand too near one another. The shadow lulls the growth.

Few sons, indeed, are like their fathers. Generally they are worse; but just a few are better.

Sons have always a rebellious wish to be disillusioned by that which charmed their fathers.

In order to get as much fame as one’s father one has to be much more able than he.

Everyone calls his son his son, whether he has talents or has not talents.

You may live a long while with some people, and be on friendly terms with them, and never once speak openly with them from your soul.

Which of us has known his brother? Which of us has looked into his father's heart? Which of us has not remained forever prison-pent? Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?

And if I go alone, I don’t even have to talk.

I find it wholesome to be alone the better part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating.

You and I possess manifold ideal bonds in the interests we share; but each of us has his poor body and his irremediable, incommunicable dreams.

There are places and moments in which one is so completely alone that one sees the world entire.

There are some solitary wretches who seem to have left the rest of mankind, only, as Eve left Adam, to meet the devil in private.

We are fools to depend upon the society of our fellow-men. Wretched as we are, powerless as we are, they will not aid us; we shall die alone.

Nature has presented us with a large faculty of entertaining ourselves alone; and often calls us to it, to teach us that we owe ourselves in part to society, but chiefly and mostly to ourselves.

A solitary, unused to speaking of what he sees and feels, has mental experiences which are at once

What a commentary on our civilization, when being alone is considered suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices it—like a secret vice!

Solitude is bearable only with God.

We never touch but at points.

When you have shut your doors and darkened your room, remember, never to say that you are alone; for you are not alone, but God is within, and your genius is within.

It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves.

Isolation must precede true society.

If from society we learn to live, / Tis Solitude should teach us how to die; / It hath no flatterers.

To fly from, need not be to hate, mankind: / All are not fit with them to stir and toil, / Nor is it discontent to keep the mind / Deep in its fountain.

To get into the best society nowadays, one has either to feed people, amuse people, or shock people.

Those that want friends to open themselves unto are cannibals of their own hearts.

To be in it [society] is merely a bore. But to be out of it simply a tragedy.

Teas, / Where small talk dies in agonies.

There are people whom one should like very well to drop, but would not wish to be dropped by.

Human society is founded on mutual deceit; few friendships would endure if each knew what his friend said of him in his absence.

Society is a more level surface than we imagine. Wise men or absolute fools are hard to be met with, as there are few giants or dwarfs.

If all your clothes are worn to the same state, it means you go out too much.

Society is a masked ball, where every one hides his real character, and reveals it in hiding.

The secret of success in society is a certain heartiness and sympathy.

Society soon grows used to any state of things which is imposed upon it without explanation.

A great society is a society in which its men of business think greatly of their functions.

Every social system is more or less against nature, and at every moment nature is at work to reclaim her rights.

Nature holds no brief for the human experiment: it must stand or fall by its results.

Society itself is an accident to the spirit, and if society in any of its forms is to be justified morally it must be justified at the bar of the individual conscience.

What man loses by the social contract is his natural liberty and an unlimited right to everything he tries to get and succeeds in getting; what he gains is civil liberty and the proprietorship of all he possesses.

In civilized communities men’s idiosyncrasies are mitigated by the necessity of conforming to certain rules of behaviour. Culture, is a mask that hides their faces.

Necessity reconciles and brings men together; and this accidental connection afterward forms itself into laws.