“A pretty face may be enough to catch a man, but it takes character and good nature to hold him.”

I should only ever tell the king what he ought to do, not what he could do. For if the lion knows his own strength, no man could control him.

For men use, if they have an evil turn, to write it in marble; and whoso doth us a good turn we write it in dust.

You wouldn’t abandon ship in a storm just because you couldn’t control the winds.

Every man has by the law of nature a right to such a waste portion of the earth as is necessary for his subsistence.

Occupy your mind with good thoughts, or the enemy will fill them with bad ones.

Nobody owns anything but everyone is rich – for what greater wealth can there be than cheerfulness, peace of mind, and freedom from anxiety?

The servant may not look to be in better case than his master.

By confronting us with irreducible mysteries that stretch our daily vision to include infinity, nature opens an inviting and guiding path toward a spiritual life.

Food is an implement of magic, and only the most coldhearted rationalist could squeeze the juices of life out of it and make it bland. In a true sense, a cookbook is the best source of psychological advice and the kitchen the first choice of room for a therapy of the world.

I die the king’s faithful servant, but God’s first.

Howbeit, this one thing, son, I assure you on my faith, that if the parties will at hands call for justice, then, all were it my father stood on the one side, and the devil on the other, his cause being good, the devil should have right.

If the lion knew his own strength, hard were it for any man to rule him.

They wonder much to hear that gold, which in itself is so useless a thing, should be everywhere so much esteemed, that even men for whom it was made, and by whom it has its value, should yet be thought of less value than it is.

Rose! Thou art the sweetest flower that ever drank the amber shower: Even the Gods, who walk the sky, are amourous of thy scented sigh.

Because the soul has such deep roots in personal and social life and its values run so contrary to modern concerns, caring for the soul may well turn out to be a radical act, a challenge to accepted norms.

If honor were profitable, everybody would be honorable.

While the womanly god demands our veneration, the godlike woman kindles our love; but while we allow ourselves to melt in the celestial loveliness, the celestial self-sufficiency holds us back in awe.

It’s terrible to allow conventional habits to gain a hold on a whole household; to eat, sleep and live by clock ticks.

Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.

I’ve learned, That when your newly born grandchild holds your little finger in his little fist, that you’re hooked for life.

The issue is that if you hold onto the resentment against yourself, you’re just going to recreate that destructive pattern in different forms because unconsciously it’s still a belief system that limits you.

I’m not sure what the future holds but I do know that I’m going to be positive.

Men will clutch at illusions when they have nothing else to hold to.

We are so much more than skin can hold.