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

The deed is everything; the fame is nothing.

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.

And all must follow in my wake.

A person hears only what they understand.

If I love you, what business is it of yours?

How often do I lull my seething blood to rest, for you have never seen anything so unsteady, so uncertain, as this heart.

Every day I observe more and more the folly of judging of others by ourselves; and I have so much trouble with myself, and my own heart is in such constant agitation, that I am well content to let others pursue their own course, if they only allow me the same privilege.

Difficulties increase the nearer we get to the goal.

We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.

A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.

Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though ’twere his own.

The greatest evil that can befall man is that he should come to think ill of himself.

Every day one should at least hear one little song, read one good poem, see one fine painting and – if at all possible – speak a few sensible words.

If any man wish to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts; and if any would write in a noble style, let him first possess a noble soul.

We often feel that we lack something, and seem to see that very quality in someone else, promptly attributing all our own qualities to him too, and a kind of ideal contentment as well. And so the happy mortal is a model of complete perfection–which we have ourselves created.

What is uttered from the heart alone will win the heart of others to your own.

Intelligence plus character-that is the goal of true education.

Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow. Every job is a self portrait of the person who did it. Autograph your work with excellence.

Man is, above all, he who creates.

Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the fates.

There is no magic in magic, it’s all in the details.

Reprove your friend in secret and praise him openly.

He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked.

Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.