Whoever loves becomes humble. Those who love have, so to speak, pawned a part of their narcissism.
Lord, Lord, how subject we old men are to this vice of lying!
There is no harm in repeating a good thing.
Avoid lawsuits beyond all things they pervert your conscience, impair your health, and dissipate your property.
Poets are the only people to whom love is not only a crucial, but an indispensable experience, which entitles them to mistake it for a universal one.
An index is a great leveller.
We are nearer loving those who hate us than those who love us more than we wish.
Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.
Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
The evil that men do lives after them the good is oft interred with their bones.
Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the Gods.
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity.
By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest Second, by imitation, which is easiest and third by experience, which is the bitterest.
It seems to me that, in every culture, I come across a chapter headed 'Wisdom.' And then I know exactly what is going to follow: 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.'
Shrinking away from death is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose.
Power is action the electoral principle is discussion. No political action is possible when discussion is permanently established.
Some are made modest by great praise, others insolent.
Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.
The harvest of old age is the recollection and abundance of blessing previously secured.
It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment.
Humans have certain properties and characteristics which are intrinsic to them, just as every other organism does. That's human nature.
Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.
Natural ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.
One man cannot practice many arts with success.
Nothing is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naivete rests all aesthetics, it is the first truth of aesthetics. Let us immediately add its second: nothing is ugly but degenerate man - the domain of aesthetic judgment is therewith defined.
There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.
This is the truth: as from a fire aflame thousands of sparks come forth, even so from the Creator an infinity of beings have life and to him return again.
I am a soul. I know well that what I shall render up to the grave is not myself. That which is myself will go elsewhere. Earth, thou art not my abyss!
A great value of antiquity lies in the fact that its writings are the only ones that modern men still read with exactness.
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