“Moral maxims are surprisingly useful on occasions when we can invent little else to justify our actions.”

It is better to have dreamed a thousand dreams that never were than never to have dreamed at all.

Fearing no insult, asking for no crown, receive with indifference both flattery and slander, and do not argue with a fool.

Somewhere between obsession and compulsion is impulse.

Love passed, the Muse appeared, the weather of mind got clarity new-found; now free, I once more weave together emotion, thought, and magic sound.

I am married and happy. My only wish is that nothing will change.

Two fixed ideas can no more exist together in the moral world than two bodies can occupy one and the same place in the physical world.

A man who’s active and incisive can yet keep nail-care much in mind: why fight what’s known to be decisive? Custom is despot of mankind.

To love all ages yield surrender; But to the young it’s raptures bring A blessing bountiful and tender- As storms refresh the fields of spring.

A deception that elevates us is dearer than a host of low truths.

Tis time, my friend, ’tis time! For rest the heart is aching; Days follow days in flight, and every day is taking, Fragments of being, while together you and I, Make plans to live. Look, all is dust, and we shall die.

The less we show our love to a woman, Or please her less, and neglect our duty, The more we trap and ruin her surely, In the flattering toils of philandery.

As long as there is one heart on Earth where I still live, my memory will not die.

Cabbage soup and barley. They’re Russia’s national food. Both excellent in their way, but a shade monotonous.

I want to understand you, I study your obscure language.

Ballet is a dance executed by the human soul.

Play interests me very much,” said Hermann: “but I am not in the position to sacrifice the necessary in the hope of winning the superfluous.

Are you living to justify yourself, or are you living because you are justified?

Perhaps one cannot, what is more one must not, understand what happened, because to understand [the Holocaust] is almost to justify.

But the nature of the universe is such that ends can never justify means. On the contrary, the means always determine the end.

Reasoning discovers the true cause of our acts, rationalization finds good reasons for justifying our acts.

You can be a victim or you can be rich, but you can’t be both. Listen up! Every time, and I mean every time, you blame, justify, or complain, you are slitting your financial throat.

Very often people who admit the facts, who are willing to see that Mr. Rockefeller has employed force and fraud to secure his ends, justify him by declaring, ‘It’s business.’ That is, ‘it’s business’ has come to be a legitimate excuse for hard dealing, sly tricks, special privileges.

I was raised in California, so this whole New York winter thing is completely new for me. I’ve already justified buying seven coats!

By any reasonable measure of achievement, the faith of the Enlightenment thinkers in science was justified.