One should be light like a bird, and not like a feather.”
Paul Valéry - Tel quel

   Image attribution:  Background photo by Jan Solà SB on Unsplash

It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”
Mark Twain - Quotation of uncertain origin

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.”
Seneca - Epistulae morales ad Lucilium

• wind

   Image attribution:  Background photo by Austin Neill on Unsplash

In the practice of tolerance, one's enemy is the best teacher.”
Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

• enemy
• tolerance

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”
Winston Churchill - Quotation of uncertain origin

• enthusiasm
• success

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
Leo Tolstoy

• change
• oneself
• world

I think my opinions are good and sound, but who does not think the same of his own?”
Michel de Montaigne - Essays

• opinion

I am rich in the goods that I can do without.”
Louis Vigée - Poésies

• wealth

Love truth, but pardon error.”
Voltaire - Discourse in Verse on Man - on Freedom

• forgiveness
• mistake
• truth

   Image attribution:  Background photo by Neil Thomas on Unsplash

To be happy, we must consider the happiness of another.”
Gaston Bachelard - La Psychanalyse du feu

• happiness
• others

Pessimism comes from the temperament, optimism from the will.”
Émile-Auguste Chartier, known as Alain - Propos sur le bonheur

• optimism
• pessimism
• will

I dare to believe that inner joy has some secret power to win the favour of fortune.”
René Descartes - Correspondance avec Élisabeth

• joy
• strength
• to dare

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.”
Michel de Montaigne - Essays

• to be

Science without conscience is only ruin of the soul.”
François Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel

• consciousness
• science
• soul

   Image attribution:  Background photo by Mat Reding on Unsplash

To live means to love, but above all, to love life.”
Blanche Pierson

• life
• love
• to live

Hope stole into my heart against my will.”
Jean Racine - Phèdre

• heart
• hope

   Image attribution:  Background photo by Lucie Dawson on Unsplash

It is not so much our friends' help that helps us, as the confidence of their help.”
Epicurus

• friendship
• trust

In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.”
Leonardo da Vinci

• present
• time
• water

   Image attribution:  Background photo by Andrii Podilnyk on Unsplash

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein - Philosophical Investigations

• intelligence
• Language
• philosophy

In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.”
Albert Camus - L'Été

   Image attribution:  Background photo by Cristina Gottardi on Unsplash

Enjoy present pleasures in such a way as not to injure future ones.”
Seneca

• future
• pleasure
• present

There is more to life than increasing its speed.”
Mahatma Gandhi

• life

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.”
Confucius

• beauty

If you don't know where you are going any road can take you there.”
Lewis Carroll

• way

   Image attribution:  Background photo by Jennifer Latuperisa-Andresen on Unsplash

Happiness is not easily won; it is hard to find it in ourselves and impossible to find it elsewhere.”
Nicolas Chamfort - Maximes et pensées

• difficulty
• happiness

In all things it is better to hope than to despair.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

• hope

Human wisdom consists in a knowledge of the order in which it is profitable to know things;”
Leo Tolstoy

• knowledge
• wisdom

A great part of progress consists in the desire to make progress.”
Seneca - Epistulae morales ad Lucilium

• progress
• will

All of us harbour in ourselves hidden gardens and plantations;”
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - The Joyful Science

• garden
• to hide

The language of truth is simple.”
Seneca - Epistulae morales ad Lucilium

• Language
• simplicity
• truth