Voltaire

How pleasant it is for a father to sit at his child’s board. It is like an aged man reclining under the shadow of an oak which he has planted.

The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.

I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.

The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.

Let us work without theorizing, tis the only way to make life endurable.

History is only the register of crimes and misfortunes.

Failure is success if we learn from it.

We are inclined to believe those whom we don not know because they have never deceived us.

Friends… they cherish one another’s hopes. They are kind to one another’s dreams.

When it comes to the story of my heart, I am the villain, locking it away; denying its right be free. The chains are tight, restricting its growth; long enough to see through the window of opportunity, but the only escape it has, is via the pen. Why do I deny myself the opportunities? I know it comes from a place of protection, but also of fear. I think my heart has grown a resentment because of this betrayal, and has decided, enough is enough.

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.

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

As the Sandwich Islander believes that the strength and valor of the enemy he kills passes into himself, so we gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

He took off his hat and shook it (having hurried home as though his own coronation were waiting), and moved now with the slow deliberation of lonely people who have time for every meager requirement of their lives.

Sorrow makes us children again.

Better is the enemy of good.

That which we call sin in others, is experiment for us.

Method goes far to prevent trouble in business: for it makes the task easy, hinders confusion, saves abundance of time, and instructs those that have business depending, both what to do and what to hope.

None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.

We fly to beauty as an asylum from the terrors of finite nature.