“If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.”

There is no past we can bring back by longing for it. There is only an eternal now that builds and creates out of the past something new and better.

The intelligent man finds everything laughable, the sensible man hardly anything.

The suffering may be moral or physical; and in my opinion it is just as absurd to call a man a coward who destroys himself, as to call a man a coward who dies of a malignant fever.

Doubt can only be removed by action.

There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity.

Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.

Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing.

The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it.

The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers & cities; but to know someone who thinks & feels with us, & who, though distant, is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.

Love does not dominate; it cultivates.

Everybody wants to be somebody, but nobody wants to grow.

For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him, he must regard himself as greater than he is.

He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.

To be loved for what one is, that is the greatest exception. The great majority love in others only what they lend him; their own selves, their version of him.

Night is the other half of life, and the better half.

Behaviour is a mirror in which every one displays his own image.

In order to discover the character of people we have only to observe what they love.

The thing is, even if you’re playing sort of a heightened character and playing inside sort of a heightened reality, you can still apply your own truths to those characters.

We cannot live better than in seeking to become better.

Watch your actions, they become your habits. Watch your habits, they become your character.

Courage is the gift of character

The only way to truly know a person is to argue with them. For when they argue in full swing, then they reveal their true character.

Portraying emotionally ill characters gives me the chance to really act.

You are not defined by an Instagram photo, by a ‘Like,’ by a comment. That does not define you.