Society and the World

Don’t criticize them; they are just what we would be under similar circumstances.

Don’t criticize them; they are just what we would be under similar circumstances.

Know how to rely on yourself.

We are all something, but none of us are everything.

No one has ever properly understood me, I have never fully understood anyone; and no one understands anyone else.

It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do, that makes life blessed.

The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.

The beginning of wisdom is the definition of the terms.

To say that man is made up of strength and weakness, of insight and blindness, of pettiness and grandeur, is not to draw up an indictment against him: it is to define him.

Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.

Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.

Pride, the never-failing vice of fools.

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.

If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.

To do great work, a man must be very idle as well as very industrious.

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.

A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.

Everyone needs a sense of shame, but no one needs to feel ashamed.

Though men pride themselves on their great actions, often they are not the result of any great design, but of chance.

In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn, than to contemplate.

Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?

Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.

As long as you live, keep learning how to live.

With self-discipline most anything is possible.