Robert Brault

There is no daily chore so trivial that it cannot be made important by skipping it two days running.

Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.

If you can’t forgive and forget, pick one.

A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.

A great man is always willing to be little.

Rome – the city of visible history, where the past of a whole hemisphere seems moving in funeral procession with strange ancestral images and trophies gathered from afar.

The only reward of virtue is virtue the only way to have a friend is to be one.

Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need it. We solicitously and apologetically caress and celebrate him, because he held on his way and scorned our disapprobation. The gods loved him because men hated him.

If you and I are having a single thought of violence or hatred against anyone in the world at this moment, we are contributing to the wounding of the world.

Kings in this should imitate God, their mercy should be above their works.

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

If a man’s fortune does not fit him, it is like the shoe in the story; if too large it trips him up, if too small it pinches him.

Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter.

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

Virtue knows that it is impossible to get on without compromise, and tunes herself, as it were, a trifle sharp to allow for an inevitable fall in playing.

The ocean is a wilderness reaching round the globe, wilder than a Bengal jungle, and fuller of monsters, washing the very wharves of our cities and the gardens of our sea-side residences.

If I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior.

All generalizations are false, including this one.