All quotes

You are going to make mistakes — own them, make amends, and move on. Guilt and regret kills many a man before their time. Turn the page, get off the ride.

It is only when life is sluggish within us that we speak: only at moments when reality lies far away, and we do not wish to be conscious of our brethren.

Some there are that have no silence, and that kill the silence around them, and these are the only creatures that pass through life unperceived.

Who has not known those silent moments which separated the lips to reunite the souls?

There is no better, there is no more open door by which you can enter into the study of natural philosophy, than by considering the physical phenomena of a candle.

Now the end, I take it, is all one, to live at more leisure and at one's ease: but men do not always take the right way.

Ambition is of all others the most contrary humour to solitude; glory and repose are things that cannot possibly inhabit in one and the same place.

In our ordinary actions there is not one of a thousand that concerns ourselves.

Let us tell ambition that it is she herself who gives us a taste of solitude; for what does she so much avoid as society?

Retire yourself into yourself, but first prepare yourself there to receive yourself: it were a folly to trust yourself in your own hands, if you cannot govern yourself.

There is nothing so unsociable and sociable as man, the one by his vice, the other by his nature.

Your heart is wounded with compassion to hear the mourning of friends, and, perhaps with anger, to hear the counterfeit condolings of pretenders.

Nations, like individuals in a state of nature, are equal and independent, possessing certain rights and owing certain duties to each other, arising from their necessary and unavoidable relations; which rights and duties there is no common human authority to protect and enforce.

Such persons should recollect that without law there can be no real practical liberty; that when law is trampled under foot tyranny rules, whether it appears in the form of a military despotism or of popular violence.

The beauty of our system of government consists, and its safety and durability must consist, in avoiding mutual collisions and encroachments and in the regular separate action of all, while each is revolving in its own distinct orbit.

The great law of morality ought to have a national as well as a personal and individual application.

The law is the only sure protection of the weak and the only efficient restraint upon the strong.

Men who are successful always seek the company of others who are successful, while men who are on the ragged side of life always seek the company of those who are in similar circumstances.

No one may become a real leader in any walk of life without practicing the habit of doing more work and better work than that for which he is paid.

The man who labors without a definite purpose that is backed up by a definite plan for its attainment, resembles the ship that has lost its rudder.

Wherefore the nature of a multitude is no more to be blamed than the nature of princes, since both equally err when they can do so without regard to consequences.

this vice of ingratitude has its source either in avarice or in suspicion

Nevertheless, he who has relied least on fortune is established the strongest.

injuries ought to be done all at one time, so that, being tasted less, they offend less; benefits ought to be given little by little, so that the flavour of them may last longer

princes ought to leave affairs of reproach to the management of others, and keep those of grace in their own hands