“Misunderstandings and neglect occasion more mischief in the world than malice and wickedness.”

What I possess, seems far away to me, and what is gone becomes reality.

Nothing is more dangerous than solitude.

Nothing shows a man’s character more than what he laughs at.

Do not give in too much to feelings. A overly sensitive heart is an unhappy possession on this shaky earth.

When scholars study a thing, they strive to kill it first, if it’s alive; then they have the parts and they’ve lost the whole, for the link that’s missing was the living soul.

Oblivion is full of people who allow the opinions of others to overrule their belief in themselves.

Be above it! Make the world serve your purpose, but do not serve it!

Every reader, if he has a strong mind, reads himself into the book, and amalgamates his thoughts with those of the author.

What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.

I am not omniscient, but I know a lot.

The rich want good wine, the poor, plenty of wine.

What a torment it is to see so much loveliness passing and repassing before us, and yet not dare to lay hold of it!

Is this the destiny of man? Is he only happy before he has acquired his reason or after he has lost it?

Instruction does much, but encouragement everything.

Few people have the imagination for reality.

Ignorance sheer ignorance. There is no confidence to equal it. It’s only when you know something about a profession that you are timid or careful.

Reason and Ignorance, the opposites of each other, influence the great bulk of mankind. If either of these can be rendered sufficiently extensive in a country, the machinery of Government goes easily on. Reason obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.

A nation under a well regulated government, should permit none to remain uninstructed. It is monarchical and aristocratical government only that requires ignorance for its support.

Left unattended, problems only intensify.

Be so good they can’t ignore you.

Often-times the most difficult competition comes, not from the strong, the intelligent, the conservative competitor, but from the man who is holding on by the eyelids and is ignorant of his costs, and anyway he’s got to keep running or bust!

The trade of governing has always been monopolized by the most ignorant and the most rascally individuals of mankind.

When I’m in drag, I don’t always want to be spoken to, but I love being looked at. Nobody puts that much work into how they look to be ignored.