Inspirational Quotes by Byron J. Rees
“It is a fool's life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before.”
“This is the frost coming out of the ground; this is Spring. It precedes the green and flowery spring, as mythology precedes regular poetry. I”
“The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it.”
“This spending of the best part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet. He should have gone up garret at once. “What!” exclaim a million Irishmen starting up from all the shanties in the land, “is not this railroad which we have built a good thing?” Yes, I answer, comparatively good, that is, you might have done worse; but I wish, as you are brothers of mine, that you could have spent your time better than digging in this dirt.”
“I one evening overtook one of my townsmen, who has accumulated what is called 'a handsome property'..on the Walden road, driving a pair of cattle to market, who inquired of me how I could bring my mind to give up so many of the comforts of life. I answered that I was very sure I liked it passably well; I was not joking. And so I went home to my bed, and left him to pick his way through the darkness and the mud to Brighton, which place he would reach some time in the morning.”
“simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives;”
“I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”
“Where is this division of labor to end? and what object does it finally serve? No doubt another may also think for me; but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself.”
“A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work.”
“Per noi spunta solo quel giorno al cui sorgere siamo svegli.”
“Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other.”
topics: society
“One afternoon, near the end of the first summer, when I went to the village to get a shoe from the cobbler's, I was seized and put into jail, because, as I have elsewhere related, I did not pay a tax to, or recognize the authority of, the State which buys and sells men, women, and children, like cattle, at the door of its senate-house. I”
“Even in our democratic New England towns the accidental possession of wealth, and its manifestation in dress and equipage alone, obtain for the possessor almost universal respect. But they who yield such respect, numerous as they are, are so far heathen, and need to have a missionary sent to them.”
“For the improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man’s existence; as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors.”
“Though the youth at last grows indifferent, the laws of the universe are not indifferent, but are forever on the side of the most sensitive.”
topics: kindness
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Byron J. Rees was born at Westfield, Indiana to parents of ministers in the Society of Friends. When he was five years of age they moved to Walnut Ridge, Indiana, where there was a Friends' meeting of more than ordinary size and activity. It was there that his conversion took place.