Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It is always safe to assume that people are more subtle and less sensitive than they seem.
No matter what our achievements might be, we think well of ourselves only in rare moments.
The weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it.
The beginning of thought is in disagreement - not only with others but also with ourselves.
The craving to change the world is perhaps a reflection of the craving to change ourselves.
It is the pull of opposite poles that stretches souls. And only stretched souls make music.
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.
When you automate an industry you modernize it; when you automate a life you primitivize it.
In human affairs, the best stimulus for running ahead is to have something we must run from.
However much we guard against it, we tend to shape ourselves in the image others have of us.
There is apparently no surer way of turning a thing into its opposite than by exaggerating it
It needs some intelligence to be truly selfish. The unintelligent can only be self-righteous.
Those who lack the capacity to achieve much in an atmosphere of freedom will clamor for power.
Even in slight things the experience of the new is rarely without some stirring of foreboding.
In running away from ourselves we either fall on our neighbor's shoulder or fly at his throat.
The real Antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity.
A society that refuses to strive for superfluities is likely to end up lacking in necessities.
Nature has no compassion. Nature accepts no excuses and the only punishment it knows is death.
To the frustrated, freedom from responsibility is more attractive than freedom from restraint.
There is a tendency to judge a race, a nation or any distinct group by its leastworthy members.
We cannot win the weak by sharing our wealth with them. They feel our generosity as oppression.
It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.
The act of self-denial seems to confer on us the right to be harsh and merciless toward others.
What monstrosities would walk the streets were some people's faces as unfinished as their minds.
It would be difficult to exaggerate the degree to which we are influenced by those we influence.
However different the holy causes people die for, they perhaps die basically for the same thing.
We do not really feel grateful toward those who make our dreams come true; they ruin our dreams.
Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one's balance and keep afloat.
Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.
We clamor for equality chiefly in matters in which we ourselves cannot hope to obtain excellence.
Every successful person has had failures but repeated failure is no guarantee of eventual success
The less satisfaction we derive from being ourselves, the greater is our desire to be like others.
We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.
Vaguely at first, then more distinctly, I realized that man is an eternal stranger on this planet.
They who clamor loudest for freedom are often the ones least likely to be happy in a free society.
The hardest thing to cope with is not selfishness or vanity or deceitfulness, but sheer stupidity.
It sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.
He who has nothing and wants something is less frustrated than he who has something and wants more.
The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.
It takes a vice to check a vice, and virtue is the by-product of a stalemate between opposite vices.
Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.
Children, savages and true believers remember far less what they have seen than what they have heard.
Man was nature's mistake she neglected to finish him and she has never ceased paying for her mistake.
There are many who have grave scruples about deceiving but think it as nothing to deceive themselves.
Where everything is possible miracles become commonplaces, but the familiar ceases to be self-evident.
It is not love of self but hatred of self which is at the root of the troubles that afflict our world.
The majority prove their worth by keeping busy. A busy life is the nearest thing to a purposeful life.
Unlimited opportunities can be as potent a cause of frustration as a paucity or lack of opportunities.
It is thus with most of us; we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay.