Every old poem is sacred.
The human race afraid of nothing, rushes on through every crime.
How does it happen, Maecenas, that no one is content with that lot of which he has chosen or which chance has thrown his way, but praises those who follow a different course?
Undeservedly you will atone for the sins of your fathers.
He who would begun has half done. Dare to be wise; begin.
Nothing is too high for the daring of mortals: we storm heaven itself in our folly.
A shoe that is too large is apt to trip one, and when too small, to pinch the feet. So it is with those whose fortune does not suit them.
The boy gathers materials for a temple, and then when he is thirty, concludes to build a woodshed.
We should always have three friends in our lives-one who walks ahead who we look up to and follow; one who walks beside us, who is with us every step of our journey; and then, one who we reach back for and bring along after we’ve cleared the way.
Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it’s unbelievable.
Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed.
It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.
Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.
Suspicions that the mind, of itself, gathers, are but buzzes; but suspicions that are artificially nourished and put into men’s heads by the tales and whisperings of others, have stings.
In his private heart no man much respects himself.
He will always be a slave who does not know how to live upon a little.
A man’s style is his mind’s voice. Wooden minds, wooden voices.
It is generally a feminine eye that first detects the moral deficiencies hidden under the dear deceit of beauty.
I was not the lion, but it fell to me to give the lion’s roar.
Some of your grief you have cured, and lived to survive; but what torments of pain have you endured that haven’t as yet arrived.
Not only must we be good, but we must also be good for something.
A minute of thought is greater than an hour of talk.
