It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.
A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.
When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.
Happiness depends upon ourselves.
People are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of.
Man is the cruelest animal.
People speak sometimes about the “bestial” cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.
Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.
Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.
Let me be that I am and seek not to alter me.
People do not seem to realise that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.
If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.
As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being.
You’re an interesting species. An interesting mix. You’re capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you’re not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we’ve found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other.
All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire.
Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be.
Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.
Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of man he is.