“Men in excess of happiness or misery are equally inclined to severity. Witness conquerors and monks! It is mediocrity alone, and a mixture of prosperous and adverse fortune that inspire us with lenity and pity.”

The sublimity of administration consists in knowing the proper degree of power that should be exerted on different occasions.

Never create by law what can be accomplished by morality.

Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free.

I should like to abolish funerals; the time to mourn a person is at his birth, not his death.

Coffee renders many foolish people temporarily capable of wise actions

The public business must be carried on with a certain motion, neither too quick nor too slow.

To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them.

There is no one, says another, whom fortune does not visit once in his life; but when she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in at the door, and flies out at the window.

Honor is unknown in despotic states.

Honor sets all the parts of the body politic in motion, and by its very action connects them; thus each individual advances the public good, while he only thinks of promoting his own interest.

The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilisation of any country.

There are bad examples which are worse than crimes; and more states have perished from the violation of morality than from the violation of law.

What orators lack in depth they make up for in length.

Law should be like death, which spares no one.

Wherever I find envy I take a pleasure in provoking it: I always praise before an envious man those who make him grow pale.

There should be weeping at a man’s birth, not at his death.

Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.

That for me was a great liberator to realize that the show isn’t about me running around, jumping off stuff and flexing muscles, it’s about inspiring people. That makes me really happy.

Nothing inspires people more than reckless acts of courage.

Power is sexy, not simply in its own right, but because it inspires self-confidence in its owner and a shiver of subservience on the part of those who approach it.

Variety’s the very spice of life, That gives it all its flavor.

I have no idea what my teacher’s intentions were – whether she was trying to inspire us or if she actually thought visiting her Manhattan brownstone with her view of Central Park qualified as a school trip.

We all want to inspire! As we go on our life’s journey, some people inspire us and in turn, we would like to do something to inspire other people.

The French say you get hungry when you’re eating, and I get inspired when I’m working. It’s my engine.