Quotes to inspire and reflect

There are so many plans, so many schemes, and so many reasons why there should be neither plans nor schemes.

The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft agley, / An' lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain, / For promis’d joy!

Were a man to order his life by the rules of true reason, a frugal substance joined to a contented mind is for him great riches; for never is there any lack of a little.

Plain living is nothing but voluntary poverty.

We are all of us richer than we think we are; but we are taught to borrow and to beg, and brought up

Begin with another’s to end with your own.

All places are alike, / And every earth is fit for burial.

God gives all men all earth to love, / But, since man’s heart is small, / Ordains for each one spot shall prove / Beloved over all.

A blade of grass is always a blade of grass, whether in one country or another.

The difference between landscape and landscape is small, but there is a great difference in the beholders.

All places are distant from heaven alike.

One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it’s left behind.

What value has compassion that does not take its object in its arms?

Worse than idle is compassion / If it end in tears and sighs.

Verily, I do not like them, the merciful who feel blessed in their pity: they are lacking too much in shame. If I must pity, at least I do not want it known; and if I do pity, it is preferably from a distance.

Compassion for the friend should conceal itself under a hard shell.

We may have uneasy feelings for seeing a creature in distress without pity; for we have not pity unless we wish to relieve them.

Sacrifice not thy heart upon every altar.

You may regret calamities if you can thereby help the sufferer, but if you cannot, mind your own business.

Pity melts the mind to love.

Endow the Living—with the Tears— / You squander on the Dead.

A tear dries quickly, especially when it is shed for the troubles of others.

Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace.

There are a few things that’ll move people to pity, a few, but the trouble is, when they’ve been used several times, they no longer work.

Experience makes us see an enormous difference between piety and goodness.

It is rash to intrude upon the piety of others: both the depth and the grace of it elude the stranger.

The best way to see divine light is to put out thy own candle.

Piety with some people, but especially with women, is either a passion, or an infirmity of age, or a fashion which must be followed.

Fear God, and where you go men shall think they walk in hallowed cathedrals.

There is nothing, I think, more unfortunate than to have soft, chubby, fat-looking children who go to watch their school play basketball every Saturday and regard that as their week’s exercise.

Oh, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock up to rock, / The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool silver shock / Of the plunge in a pool’s living water.

For half a century photography has been the “art form” of the untalented. Obviously some pictures are more satisfactory than others, but where is credit due? To the designer of the camera? to the finger on the button? to the law of averages?

There was a group of Americans taking photographs. “What barbarians!’’ said Papa. “They take photographs so that they do not have to look.”

Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.

When one man speaks to another man who doesn’t understand him, and when the man who’s speaking no longer understands, it's metaphysics.

Every philosophy is tinged with the colouring of some secret imaginative background, which never emerges explicitly into its trains of reasoning.

All the persecutors declare against each other mortal war, while the philosopher, oppressed by them all, contents himself with pitying them.

The various opinions of philosophers have scattered through the world as many plagues of the mind as Pandora's box did those of the body; only with this difference, that they have not left hope at the bottom.

That’s why I love philosophy: no one wins.

Philosophers are as jealous as women; each wants a monopoly of praise.

At best, the true philosopher can fulfil his mission very imperfectly, which is to pilot himself, or at most a few voluntary companions who may find themselves in the same boat.

Philosophers, for the most part, are constitutionally timid, and dislike the unexpected. Few of them would be genuinely happy as pirates or burglars. Accordingly they invent systems which make the future calculable, at least in its main outlines.

For the learning of every virtue there is an appropriate discipline, and for the learning of suspended judgment the best discipline is philosophy.

Ethical metaphysics is fundamentally an attempt, however disguised, to give legislative force to our own wishes.

To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher.

Philosophers.—We are full of things which take us out of ourselves.

Philosophy is such an impertinently litigious lady that a man had as good be engaged in lawsuits as have to do with her.

A married philosopher belongs to comedy.