Quotes to inspire and reflect

It all goes back to those German existentialists who tell you how good dread is for you, how it saves you from distraction and gives you your freedom and makes you authentic. God is no more. But Death is.

None of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.

Whatever folly men commit, be their shortcomings or their vices what they may, let us exercise forbearance; remember that when these faults appear in others it is our follies and vices that we behold.

The faultfinder will find faults even in paradise.

Whoe’er he be / That tells my faults, I hate him mortally.

Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still greater evil to he full of them, and to be unwilling to recognize them.

The defects of human nature afford us opportunities of exercising our philosophy, the best employment of our virtues. If all men were righteous, all hearts true and frank and loyal, what use would our virtues be?

Our shortcomings are the eyes with which we see the ideal.

There exists scarcely any man so accomplished, or so necessary to his own family, but he has some failing which will diminish their regret at his loss.

It is too bad how thoughtlessly we set up harsh and unkind rules against ourselves. No one is born without faults. That man is best who has fewest.

It is well that there is no one without a fault; for he would not have a friend in the world.

Those see nothing but faults that seek for nothing else.

Worse / than a true evil is it to bear the burden of faults that are not truly yours.

A benevolent man should allow a few faults in himself, to keep his friends in countenance.

Our faults are not seen, / But past us; neither felt, but only in / The punishment.

A man must thank his defects, and stand in some terror of his talents.

It is easier to confess a defect than to claim a quality.

The real fault is to have faults and not to amend them.

The strongest have their moments of fatigue.

In the morning a man walks with his whole body; in the evening, only with his legs.

Fate has terrible power. / You cannot escape it by wealth or war. / No fort will keep it out, no ships outrun it.

Luck or tragedy, some people get runs. Then of course there are those who divide it even, good and bad, but we never hear of them. Such a life doesn’t demand attention. Only the people who get the good or bad runs.

Even-handed fate / Hath but one law for small and great: / That ample urn holds all men’s names.

Fate leads the willing, and drags along the reluctant.

See how the Fates their gifts allot, / For A is happy-—B is not. / Yet B is worthy, I dare say, / Of more prosperity than A.

Necessity is harsh. / Fate has no reprieve.

Whatsoe’er we perpetrate, / We do but row, we are steered by fate.

Superiority to Fate / Is difficult to gain / ’Tis not conferred of Any / But possible to earn.

A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.

Fashions, after all, are only induced epidemics.

Fashion is the abortive issue of vain ostentation and exclusive egotism: it is haughty, trifling, affected, servile, despotic, mean and ambitious, precise and fantastical, all in a breath—tied to no rule, and bound to conform to every whim of the minute.

New customs, / Though they be never so ridiculous / (Nay, let ’em be unmanly), yet are followed.

Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.

The present fashion is always handsome.

Fashion, n. A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey.

He is only fantastical that is not in fashion.

It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail.

Remote though your farm may be, / It’s something to be the lord of one green lizard—and free.

Life moves out of a red flare of dreams / Into a common light of common hours, / Until old age brings the red flare again.

The largest single step in the ascent of man is the change from nomad to village agriculture.

The dreamer can know no truth, not even about his dream, except by awaking out of it.

A dream is always simmering below the conventional surface of speech and reflection.

Round about what is, lies a whole mysterious world of might be, a psychological romance of possibilities and things that do not happen.

Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand: / Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!

A fantasy can be equivalent to a paradise and if the fantasy passes, better yet, because eternal paradise would be very boring.

No man will be found in whose mind airy notions do not sometime tyrannize, and force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober probability.

Few have greater riches than the joy / That comes to us in visions, / In dreams which nobody can take away.

He who passes not his days in the realm of dreams is the slave of the days.