“If your desires are not great, a little will seem much to you; for small appetite makes poverty equivalent to wealth.”

Virtue isn’t not wronging others but not wishing to wrong others.

All things happen by virtue of necessity.

You can tell the man who rings true from the man who rings false, not by his deeds alone, but also by his desires.

Tis hard to fight with anger, but the prudent man keeps it under control.

Poverty in a democracy is as much to be preferred to what is called prosperity under despots, as freedom is to slavery.

Everything existing in the universe is the fruit of chance and necessity.

The pride of youth is in strength and beauty, the pride of old age is in discretion.

The word is the shadow of the deed.

Raising children is an uncertain thing; success is reached only after a life of battle and worry.

Men should strive to think much and know little.

The animal needing something knows how much it needs, the man does not.

The man who is fortunate in his choice of son-in-law gains a son; the man unfortunate in his choice loses his daughter also.

Sexual intercourse is a slight attack of apoplexy.

The wise man’s home is the universe.

Everywhere man blames nature and fate yet his fate is mostly but the echo of his character and passion, his mistakes and his weaknesses.

One should practice much sense, not much learning.

The size of your success is measured by the strength of your desire; the size of your dream; and how you handle disappointment along the way.

Let not a man do what his sense of right bids him not to do, nor desire what it forbids him to desire. This is sufficient. The skillful artist will not alter his measures for the sake of a stupid workman.

Do not desire, for what you desire you get, and with it comes terrible bondage. It is nothing but bringing “noses on us,” as in the case of the man who had three boons to ask. We never get freedom until we are self-contained. “Self is the Saviour of self, none else.”

Desire makes everything blossom; possession makes everything wither and fade.

It taught him how to listen — how to listen with a quiet heart and a waiting soul, open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgment, without opinion.

To me the function of politics is to make possible the desirable.

One may gain political and social independence, but if one is a slave to his passions and desires, one cannot feel the pure joy of real freedom

Love is merely the name for the desire and pursuit of the whole.