Quotes to inspire and reflect

Suspense—is Hostiler than Death— / Death— tho’soever Broad, / Is just Death, and cannot increase— / Suspense—does not conclude—.

The fly ought to be used as the symbol of impertinence and audacity; for whilst all other animals shun man more than anything else, and run away even before he comes near them, the fly lights upon his very nose.

God in His wisdom made the fly / And then forgot to tell us why.

Is there a polity better ordered, the offices better distributed, and more inviolably observed and maintained, than that of bees?

The Spider as an Artist / Has never been employed— / Though his surpassing Merit / Is freely certified.

insects have / their own point / of view about / civilization / a man / thinks he amounts / to a great deal / but to a / flea or a / mosquito a / human being is / merely something / good to eat.

There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men, who talk in a road, according to the notions they have borrowed and the prejudices of their education.

The questions that are beyond the reach of economics—the beauty, dignity, pleasure and durability of life—may be inconvenient but they are important.

Many a profound genius, I suppose, who fills the world with fame of,his exploding renowned errors, is yet every day posed [baffled] by trivial questions at his own supper-table.

The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiosity to know why this is so; but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger, and mosquitoes and- silly people.

The rude beginnings of every art acquire a greater celebrity!than the art in perfection; he who first played the fiddle was looked upon as a demigod.

We have entered, almost without noticing, an age of exploration and discovery unparalleled since the Renaissance.

The new always carries with it the sense of violation, of sacrilege. What is dead is sacred; what is new, that is, different, is evil, dangerous, or subversive.

Let no one say that I have said nothing new; the arrangement of the subject is new.

Great scientific discoveries have been made by men seeking to verify quite erroneous theories about the nature of things.

Time is the greatest innovator.

Whoever blushes is already guilty; true innocence is ashamed of nothing.

Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.

He’s armed without that’s innocent within.

The courage of children and beasts is a function of innocence.

Injustice in this world is not something comparative; the wrong is deep, clear, and absolute in each private fate.

Injustice, swift, erect, and unconfined, / Sweeps the wide earth, and tramples o’er mankind.

We must believe in the gods no longer if injustice is to prevail over justice.

No man at bottom means injustice; it is always for some obscure distorted image of a right that he contends: an obscure image diffracted, exaggerated, in the wonderfulest way, by natural dimness and selfishness; getting tenfold more diffracted by exasperation of contest, till at length it become all but irrecognis- able.

Those whom men have injured they despise.

It is the feeling of injustice that is insupportable to all men.

It is far pleasanter to injure and afterwards beg forgiveness than to be injured and grant forgiveness. He who does the former gives evidence of power and afterwards of kindness of character.

A brave man thinks no one his superior who does him an injury; for he has it then in his power to make himself superior to the other by forgiving it.

Wounds heal and become scars. But scars grow with us.

Nothing may help or heal / While Amor incensed remembers wrong.

He threatens many that hath injured one.

Forgetting of a wrong is a mild revenge.

’Tis better to suffer wrong than do it.

Wounds cannot be cured without searching.

A wretched child / Is he who does not return his parents' care.

Eaten bread is forgotten.

How I like to be liked, and what I do to be liked!

Take here the grand secret—if not of pleasing all, yet of displeasing none—court mediocrity, avoid originality, and sacrifice to fashion.

People exercise an unconscious selection in being influenced.

No one is a light unto himself, not even the sun.

Next to Elka lay a man’s form. Another in my place would have made an uproar, and enough noise to rouse the whole town, but the thought occurred to me that I might wake the child.

Adultery is an evil only inasmuch as it is a theft; but we do not steal that which is given to us.

When cheated, wife or husband feels the same.

’Tis sweet to think, that, where’er we rove, / We are sure to find something blissful and dear, / And that, when we re far from the lips we love, / We’ve but to make love to the lips we are near.

Whatever may be the general endeavor of a community to render its members equal and alike, the personal pride of individuals will always seek to rise above the line, and to form somewhere an inequality to their own advantage.

A curious and eager soul was imprisoned in all this lard, but by dint of never refusing himself a pheasant or a goose or his daily procession of Roman wines, he was his own bitter jailer.

If we had to tolerate in others all that we permit in ourselves, life would become completely unbearable.

O, give it up, old chap! Sleep it off!