What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly - that is the first law of nature.
It is my own firm belief that the strength of the soul grows in proportion as you subdue the flesh.
To rule is easy, to govern difficult.
As a means of contrast with the sublime, the grotesque is, in our view, the richest source that nature can offer.
Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.
Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.
It is the nature of every person to error, but only the fool perseveres in error.
Absence from those we love is self from self - a deadly banishment.
Death is a commingling of eternity with time in the death of a good man, eternity is seen looking through time.
Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever.
Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life, a dichotomy in which you hate what you do so you can have pleasure in your spare time. Look for a situation in which your work will give you as much happiness as your spare time.
Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.
Love is a portion of the soul itself, and it is of the same nature as the celestial breathing of the atmosphere of paradise.
Religion is more than life. Remember that his own religion is the truest to every man even if it stands low in the scales of philosophical comparison.
The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.
We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely, when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success.
Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries - for heavy ones they cannot.
Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.
Doing nothing is happiness for children and misery for old men.
A library implies an act of faith.
People usually think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and ingrained opinions, but generally act according to custom.
The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.
Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.
Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.
A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
We are time's subjects, and time bids be gone.
Don't walk behind me I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.
There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.
He is a man of courage who does not run away, but remains at his post and fights against the enemy.
Obviously one must hold oneself responsible for the evil impulses of one's dreams. In what other way can one deal with them? Unless the content of the dream rightly understood is inspired by alien spirits, it is part of my own being.
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