Quotes to inspire and reflect

[ Responding to having his draft status reclassified :]

[ Description of his boxing strategy :] Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.

Not only do I knock ’em out, I pick the round.

What do girls do who haven’t any mothers to help them through their troubles?

“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.

I am angry nearly every day of my life, Jo, but I have learned not to show it; and I still hope to learn not to feel it, though it may take me another forty years to do so.

When I kill a man, I do it with my sword, but people like you don’t use swords. You gentlemen kill with your power, with your money, and sometimes just with your words: you tell people you’re doing them a favor. True, no blood flows, the man is still alive, but you’ve killed him all the same. I don’t know whose sin is greater—yours or mine.

In the fearful years of the Yezhov terror I spent seventeen months in prison queues in Leningrad. One day somebody “identified” me . . . and whispered in my ear . . . “Can you describe this?” And I said: “Yes, I can.”

In those years only the dead smiled, glad to be at rest.

[ On the superiority of his writing to his conversation :] I have but ninepence in ready money, but I can draw for a thousand pounds.

Our disputants put me in mind of the cuttle-fish, that when he is unable to extricate himself, blackens all the water about him till he becomes invisible.

[ “Last words” :] Thomas Jefferson survives.

A boy of fifteen who is not a democrat is good for nothing, and he is no better who is a democrat at twenty. Quoted in Thomas Jefferson, Journal, Jan. 1799

[ Statement made to Jonathan Sewall, 1774 :] Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish with my country.

The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people.

When People talk of the Freedom of Writing, Speaking or thinking, I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists: but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more.

[ Upon moving into the new White House :] I pray Heaven to bestow the best of Blessings on this House and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise Men ever rule under this roof.

You and I ought not to die, before We have explained ourselves to each other.

But my Country has in its Wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant Office [the vice-presidency] that ever the invention of Man contrived or his Imagination conceived: and as I can do neither good nor Evil, I must be borne away by Others and meet the common Fate.

You are afraid of the one—I, of the few. We agree perfectly that the many should have a full fair and perfect Representation.—You are Apprehensive of Monarchy; I, of Aristocracy. I would therefore have given more Power to the President and less to the Senate.

Amidst your Ardor for Greek and Latin I hope you will not forget your mother Tongue. Read Somewhat in the English Poets every day. . . . You will never be alone, with a Poet in your Poket. You will never have an idle Hour.

I am but an ordinary Man. The Times alone have destined me to Fame—and even these have not been able to give me, much. . . . Yet some great Events, some cutting Expressions, some mean Hypocrisies, have at Times, thrown this Assemblage of Sloth, Sleep, and littleness into Rage a little like a Lion.

The judicial power ought to be distinct from both the legislative and executive, and independent upon both, that so it may be a check upon both, as both should be checks upon that.

The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America.—I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires, and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.

A Pen is certainly an excellent Instrument, to fix a Mans Attention and to inflame his Ambition.

The law, in all vicissitudes of government, fluctuations of the passions, or flights of enthusiasm, will preserve a steady undeviating course; it will not bend to the uncertain wishes, imaginations, and wanton tempers of men. . . . On the one hand it is inexorable to the cries and lamentations of the prisoners; on the other it is deaf, deaf as an adder to the clamors of the populace.

He had already chosen the title of the book, after much thought: The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.

In such a régime [the government of Chief Nanga in Nigeria], I say, you died a good death if your life had inspired someone to come forward and shoot your murderer in the chest—without asking to be paid.

Let a man in a garret but burn with enough intensity and he will set fire to the world.

Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.

Zeal will do more than knowledge.

Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost.

All sorts of allowances are made for the illusions of youth; and none, or almost none, for the disen- chantments of age.

Dignity, high station, or great riches, are in some sort necessary to old men, in order to keep the younger at a distance, who are otherwise too apt to insult them upon the score of their age.

Youth is immortal; / Tis the elderly only grow old!

To the old our mouths are always partly closed; we must swallow our obvious retorts and listen. They sit above our heads, on life’s raised dais, and appeal at once to our respect and pity.

Now we are all fallen, youth from their fear, / And age from that which bred it, good example.

Most men spend the first half of their lives making the second half miserable.

He that would pass the latter part of life with honour and decency must, when he is young, consider that he shall one day be old; and remember, when he is old, that he has once been young.

In youth, it is common to measure right and wrong by the opinion of the world, and in age, to act without any measure but interest, and to lose shame without substituting virtue.

Old hands soil, it seems, what they caress; but they too have their beauty when they are joined in prayer. Young hands are made for caresses and the

Age looks with anger on the temerity of youth, and youth with contempt on the scrupulosity of age.

Heaven lies about us in our infancy! / Shades of the prison-house begin to close / Upon the growing boy.

If age, which is certainly / Just as wicked as youth, look any wiser, / It is only that youth is still able to believe / It will get away with anything, while age / Knows only too well that it has got away with nothing.

A young man is so strong, so mad, so certain, and so lost. He has everything and he is able to use nothing.

For youthful faults ripe virtues shall atone.

Youth is the time to go flashing from one end of the world to the other,, both in mind and body.

The world lay before him for his picking—full of opulent cities, golden vintages, glorious triumphs, lovely women, full of a thousand unmet and magnificent possibilities. Nothing was dull or tarnished. The strange enchanted coasts were unvisited. He was young and he could never die.