Quotes to inspire and reflect

He that is proud eats up himself. Pride is his own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle; and whatever praises itself but in the deed, devours the deed in the praise.

All men who would surpass the other animals should do their best not to pass through life silently like the beasts whom nature made prone, obedient to their bellies.

I do not believe that any peacock envies another peacock his tail, because every peacock is persuaded that his own tail is the finest in the world. The consequence of this is that peacocks are peaceable birds.

Pride dwells in the thought; the tongue can have but a very little share in it.

The truly proud man knows neither superiors nor inferiors. The first he does not admit of—the last he does not concern himself about.

Pride is seldom delicate; it will please itself with very mean advantages.

A proud man is satisfied with his own good opinion, and does not seek to make converts to it.

Pride, perceiving humility honourable, often borrows her cloak.

Pride that dines on vanity sups on contempt.

Pride is said to be the last vice the good man gets clear of.

Pride, avarice, and envy are the tongues men know and heed, a Babel of despair.

It’s a fine thing to rise above pride, but you must have pride in order to do so.

Pretending is a virtue. If you can’t pretend, you can’t be king.

I used to think that once a writer became a man of letters, if only for a half hour, he was done for. And here I am now, at the very moment of such an odious, though respectable, danger.

It is in vain that we get upon stilts, for, once on them, it is still with our legs that we must walk. And on the highest throne in the world we are still sitting on our own ass.

Affectation is an awkward and forced imitation of what should be genuine and easy, wanting the beauty that accompanies what is natural.

Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villainy, affectation part of the chosen trappings of folly; the one completes a villain, the other only finishes a fop.

Almost every man wastes part of his life in attempts to display qualities which he does not possess, and to gain applause which he cannot keep.

Some degree of affection is as necessary to the mind as dress is to the body; we must overact our part in some measure, in order to produce any effect at all.

We all wear some disguise, make some professions, use some artifice, to set ourselves off as being better than we are; and yet it is not denied that we have some good intentions and praiseworthy qualities at bottom.

All human beings have gray little souls—and they all want to rouge them up..

Excusations, cessions, modesty itself well governed, are but arts of ostentation.

When the Presidential virus attacks the system there is a tendency for the patient in his fever to move from the Right or the Left to the Center where the curative votes are.

In America, the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion: within these barriers, an author may write what he pleases; but woe to him if he goes beyond them.

The President is the representative of the whole nation and he’s the only lobbyist that all the 160 million people in this country have.

[President George] Bush talked to us like we were a bunch of morons and we ate it up. Can you imagine, the Pledge of Allegiance, read my lips—can you imagine such crap in this day and age?

I don’t know what I expected, but my first morning in the Oval Office had a surprising ring of familiarity to it. It reminded me a lot of my job as governor.

The function and responsibility of the President is to set before the American people the unfinished business, the things we must do if we are going to succeed as a nation.

Presidency, n. The greased pig in the field game of American politics.

Whatever the political affiliation of our next President, whatever his views may be on all the issues and problems that rush in upon us, he must above all be the chief executive in every sense of the word.

Do not say, “It is morning,” and dismiss it with a name of yesterday. See it for the first time as a newborn child that has no name.

The present offers itself to our touch for only an instant of time and then eludes the senses.

The passing moment is all we can be sure of; it is only common sense to extract its utmost value from it; the future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now.

Each day the world is born anew / For him who takes it rightly.

Today is yesterday's pupil.

With the Past, as past, 1 have nothing to do; nor with the Future as future. I live now, and will verify all past history in my own moments.

We can see well into the past; we can guess shrewdly into the future; but that which is rolled up and muffled in impenetrable folds is today.

The vanishing, volatile froth of the Present which any shadow will alter, any thought blow away, any event annihilate, is every' moment converted into the Adamantine Record of the Past.

I would not fear nor wish my fate, / But boldly say each night, / To-morrow let my sun his beams display, / Or in clouds hide them; I have lived today.

It is the fashion to style the present moment an extraordinary crisis.

The Will-be and the Has-been touch us more nearly than the Is. So we are more tender towards children and old people than to those who are in the prime of life.

Remember that the sole life which a man can lose is that which he is living at the moment.

Count no mortal happy till / he has passed the final limit of his life secure from pain.

It is not the weight of the future or the past that is pressing upon you, but ever that of the present alone. Even this burden, too, can be lessened if you confine it strictly to its own limits.

Knowledge humanizes mankind, and reason inclines to mildness; but prejudices eradicate every tender disposition.

Some men, under the notion of weeding out prejudices, eradicate virtue, honesty, and religion.

Order a purge for your brain, it will there be much better employed than upon your stomach.

There is no prejudice so strong as that which arises from a fancied exemption from all prejudice.