It is only necessary to grow old to become more charitable and even indulgent. I see no fault committed by others that I have not committed myself.
The older we get the more we must limit ourselves if we wish to be active.
The day is committed to error and floundering; success and achievement are matters of long range.
A teacher who can arouse a feeling for one single good action, for one single good poem, accomplishes more than he who fills our memory with rows and rows of natural objects, classified with name and form.
Who is the happiest man? He who is alive to the merit of others, and can rejoice in their enjoyment as if it were his own.
Each ten years of a man’s life has its own fortunes, its own hopes, its own desires.
They teach in academies far too many things, and far too much that is useless.
No one as ever completed their apprenticeship.
If a good person does you wrong, act as though you had not noticed it. If we practice and eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, soon the wholeworld will be blind and toothless.
Democracy does not race, it reaches the finish slowly but surely.
Merely to breathe freely does not mean to live.
As man is, so is his God. And thus is God oft strangely odd.
A state of affairs which leads to daily vexation is not the right state.
Begin by instructing yourself, then you will receive instruction from others.
One should not wish anyone disagreeable conditions of life; but for him who is involved in them by chance, they are touchstones of characters and of the most decisive value to man.
How can we learn self-knowledge? Never by taking thought but rather by action. Try to do your duty and you’ll soon discover what you’re like.
The most congenial social occasions are those ruled by cheerful deference of each for all.
Whatever is the object of a saint’s hope is the subject of his prayer.
We always hope, and in all things it is better to hope than to despair.
Yet here I stand poor fool what more, not one wit wiser than before.