I have had good experience and trial of this world...I know what it is to be a subject, what to be a sovereign, what to have good neighbours, and sometimes meet evil willers. I have found treason in trust, seen great benefits little regarded.
In moments of great grief, that’s where you look and immerse yourself. You realise you are not immortal, you are not a god, you are part of the natural world and you come to accept that.
Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.
Achievement brings its own anticlimax.
Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.
When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, 'I used everything you gave me'.
The oldest, shortest words- 'yes' and 'no'- are those which require the most thought.
If I speak of myself in different ways, that is because I look at myself in different ways.
You always admire what you really don't understand.
There is an art, or rather a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
You can best serve civilization by being against what usually passes for it.
Compassion is the basis of morality.
In the practice of tolerance, one's enemy is the best teacher.
Desire, ignorance, and inequality—this is the trinity of bondage.
There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it.
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.
To live is not merely to breathe; it is to act; it is to make use of our organs, senses, faculties - of all those parts of ourselves which give us the feeling of existence
All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope.
One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can overcome adversity.
To a wise and good man the whole earth is his fatherland.
Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak.
