“The safest principle through life, instead of reforming others, is to set about perfecting yourself.”

It is better to make friends than adversaries of a conquered race.

There must be more malice than love in the hearts of all wits.

If men would only take the chances of doing right because it is right, instead of the immediate certainty of the advantage of doing wrong, how much happier would their lives be.

Men of genius are often considered superstitious, but the fact is, the fineness of their nerve renders them more alive to the supernatural than ordinary men.

It is highly convenient to believe in the infinite mercy of God when you feel the need of mercy, but remember also his infinite justice.

All government is an evil, but, of the two form’s of that evil, democracy or monarchy, the sounder is monarchy; the more able to do its will, democracy.

The greatest geniuses have always attributed everything to God, as if conscious of being possessed of a spark of His divinity.

No man, perhaps, is so wicked as to commit evil for its own sake. Evil is generally committed under the hope of some advantage the pursuit of virtue seldom obtains. Yet the most successful result of the most virtuous heroism is never without its alloy.

We are a compound of both here and hereafter; we shall be made responsible for the actions of both while here. Anything beyond this is beyond our power to prove, and would be of no real value if we could.

Satan is to be punished eternally in the end, but for a while he triumphs.

Nothing is difficult; it is only we who are indolent.

The only legitimate artists in England are the architects.

Mistrusts sometimes come over one’s mind of the justice of God. But let a real misery come again, and to whom do we fly? To whom do we instinctively and immediately look up?

Newton’s health, and confusion to mathematics.

Temperance in everything is requisite for happiness.

Danger is the very basis of superstition. It produces a searching after help supernaturally when human means are no longer supposed to be available.

Emotional abuse is like brainwashing in that it systematically wears away at the victim’s self-confidence, sense of self, trust in her perceptions and self-concept.

They are ruled by appeals to authority. Their self-image and sense of emotional well-being trumps any and all objective evidence to the contrary.

I believe it is our own misperceptions of who we really are that leads to every self-created hell you’ll find in this world.

Self awareness allows you to self-correct.

Every time feels like my first time. And I just find that the process of it feeds into one’s own self-obsession.

I felt at some point that I had nothing to lose, and [laughs] maybe I was wrong. I think, you know, there’s always these little autobiographical secrets behind things. I think I was really attacking my earlier self, and this kind of pretentious figure.

For the wise have always known that no one can make much of his life until self-searching has become a regular habit, until he is able to admit and accept what he finds, and until he patiently and persistently tries to correct what is wrong.

Take away the self-conceited, and there will be elbowroom in the world.