All quotes

I’m not a bit changed--not really. I’m only just pruned down and branched out. The real me--back here--is just the same.

if you see that anything is within man's power, and part of his proper work, conclude that you also may attain to it

If you have no confidence in self you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence you have won even before you have started.

Surely the United States Senate is big enough to take self-criticism and self-appraisal.

Look back on these forebodings, not hastily but reluctantly made, and see how in every instance they have completely failed.

Give others and yourself more credit. It just happened, you witnessed it, you just did it, believe it.

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.

The prince, therefore, who would guard himself against plots, ought more to fear those men to whom he has been too indulgent, than those to whom he has done great wrongs.

a prince should entrust his friends with so much authority only as leaves a certain interval between his position and theirs

A wise man ought always to follow the paths beaten by great men, and to imitate those who have been supreme, so that if his ability does not equal theirs, at least it will savour of it.

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 instinct is something which transcends knowledge.

Every year if not every day we have to wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect knowledge.

General propositions do not decide concrete cases.

No one will insist upon your rights while you yourself doubt that you have any.

No one can pursue a worthy object steadily and persistently with all the powers of his mind, and yet make his life a failure.

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.

But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

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

This custom of ostracism was not intended as a punishment for crime, but was called, in order to give it a plausible title, a check to excessive power.