reflection Quotes

Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?

Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature.

Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness... and so frivolous is he that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least thing, such as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is sufficient enough to amuse him.

In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.

If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.

Continuous eloquence wearies. Grandeur must be abandoned to be appreciated. Continuity in everything is unpleasant. Cold is agreeable, that we may get warm.

Little things console us because little things afflict us.

Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.

It is good to be tired and wearied by the futile search after the true good, that we may stretch out our arms to the Redeemer.

We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put something before us to prevent us seeing it.