Quotes, maxims and aphorisms

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

wind

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.

info 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

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

wealth

Love truth, but pardon error.”
Voltaire

forgiveness
mistake
truth

info 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

science
soul

Science without conscience is only ruin of the soul.

info 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

Hope stole into my heart against my will.

info 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

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.

info 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

intelligence
Language
philosophy

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

In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.

info Image attribution: Background photo by Cristina Gottardi on Unsplash

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

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

info 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

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

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

Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.”
Jean de La Bruyere - Les Caractères

time

The usual pretext of those who make others unhappy is that they do it for their own good.”
Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues - Reflexions and Maxims

good

It is easier to be wise for others than for ourselves.”
François de La Rochefoucauld - Reflections, or Sentences and Moral Maxims

oneself
others
sage

Where all is well, there is no such thing as injustice. Justice and goodness are inseparable.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Emile, or On Education

good
Justice

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A Midsummer Night's Dream
À quoi rêvent les jeunes filles
A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues
A Treatise of Human Nature
A Woman of No Importance
Aeneid
Alcools
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
All's Well That Ends Well
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Analects
Animal Farm
Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?
Apology of Socrates
Art Poétique
As you like it
Being and Nothingness
Beyond Good and Evil
Candide ou l'Optimisme
Carnets
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Codex Atlanticus
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Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge
Correspondance avec Élisabeth
Course in General Linguistics
Course of Positive Philosophy
Creative Evolution
Crisis of the Mind
Critique of Pure Reason
De finibus bonorum et malorum
De rerum natura
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789
Dictionary of Received Ideas
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Don Carlos
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Ecoutez la chanson bien douce
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Green
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Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits
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Slowness
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The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind
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Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness
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Treatise on the Education of Girls
Treatise on Tolerance
Twelfth Night
Twilight of the Idols
Utilitarianism
Walden; or, Life in the Woods
Wind, Sand and Stars
Zadig, or The Book of Fate

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