Usually the modest person passes for someone reserved, the silent for a sullen person.
Why do you hasten to remove anything which hurts your eye, while if something affects your soul you postpone the cure until next year?
The man who is ostentatious of his modesty is twin to the statue that wears a fig-leaf.
Not believing in force is the same as not believing in gravity.
Wake up, lift your head, open your eyes, and dream. Gaze softly into your heart’s whispers. Notice the pull of your belly and that which makes you come alive. Let your soul speak, beckoning you to embark on that one voyage you can no longer let lie.
Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.
There are charms made only for distance admiration.
Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.
If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a warning and not an example.
If you aren’t fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.
The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.
I find that the Americans have no passions, they have appetites.
In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language: the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.
If all you can do is crawl, start crawling.
Self-command is the main discipline.
Love can often be misguided and do as much harm as good, but respect can do only good. It assumes that the other person’s stature is as large as one’s own, his rights as reasonable, his needs as important.
A wise neuter joins with neither, but uses both as his honest interest leads him.
It is the nature of babies to be in bliss.
The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery.
The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
What provokes your risibility, Sir? Have I said anything that you understand? Then I ask pardon of the rest of the company.
