All quotes

Life is not a popularity contest. Be brave, take the hill but first, answer the question, “What is my hill?”

We have created a fictitious ceiling, a roof, to our expectations of ourselves, a limit — where we think it’s all too good to be true.

Moreover men commonly deceive themselves in respect of the love which they imagine others bear them, nor can ever be sure of it until they have put it to the proof.

Therefore it must be inferred that good counsels, whencesoever they come, are born of the wisdom of the prince, and not the wisdom of the prince from good counsels.

Therefore, if he who rules a principality cannot recognize evils until they are upon him, he is not truly wise; and this insight is given to few.

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.

I am crucified with Christ: neverthless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

Whereas among real friends there is no rivalry or jealousy of one another, but they are satisfied and contented alike whether they are equal or one of them is superior.

a friend should be like money tried before being required, not found faulty in our need

Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed.

We say so because we feel that what we love is not in your will, but above it.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

To be great is to be misunderstood

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

Let my soul become enlarged; I am not enough; I am little and contemptible.

It never seems to them that they have served enough; they have a fine impatience of their virtues.

Human judgment is never unerring, and is rarely regarded as otherwise than wrong by the unsuccessful party in the contest.

To disappoint a friend is unpleasing; and he that forms expectations like yours, must be disappointed.

Friends are often chosen for similitude of manners, and therefore each palliates the other's failings, because they are his own.

A man must have the courage to be himself, and not the shadow or the echo of another.

Energy of temperament, with a moderate degree of wisdom, will carry a man further than any amount of intellect without it.

Self-respect, originating in self-love, instigates the first step of improvement.

A good conscience fears no witnesses, but a guilty conscience is solicitous even of solitude.

The ostentation of grief is many times more than the grief itself.

almost any man can do a great deal, if he will, by getting the utmost possible service out of the qualities that he actually possesses