The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of manly character and of wisdom.
Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune.
Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.
I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.
One may sometimes tell a lie, but the grimace that accompanies it tells the truth.
I put forward formless and unresolved notions, as do those who publish doubtful questions to debate in the schools, not to establish the truth but to seek it.
Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.
God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil to exist.
Every age has its own poetry in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.
Happiness is a monstrosity! Punished are those who seek it.
A great city is not to be confounded with a populous one.
In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad.
The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.
There is nothing that wastes the body like worry, and one who has any faith in God should be ashamed to worry about anything whatsoever.
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check yet crime persists. Why? Because the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium.
There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.
Jealousy is both reasonable and belongs to reasonable men, while envy is base and belongs to the base, for the one makes himself get good things by jealousy, while the other does not allow his neighbour to have them through envy.
Civil war? What does that mean? Is there any foreign war? Isn't every war fought between men, between brothers?
He that communicates his secret to another makes himself that other's slave.
Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.
You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.
Dedicate yourself to the good you deserve and desire for yourself. Give yourself peace of mind. You deserve to be happy. You deserve delight.
Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.
Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.
When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them.
You may delay, but time will not.
Men are so simple and yield so readily to the desires of the moment that he who will trick will always find another who will suffer to be tricked.
The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.
The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.
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