“We should adopt his principles and govern men as they are and not as what we’d like them to be.”

Stupidity is far more dangerous than evil, for evil takes a break from time to time, stupidity does not.

He would not stoop even to pick up the old manuscript I am going to seek with so much trouble and fatigue. And in truth man is made rather to eat ices than to pore over old texts.

For the majority of people, though they do not know what to do with this life, long for another that shall have no end.

Yet, every now and then, there would pass a young girl, slender, fair and desirable, arousing in young men a not ignoble desire to possess her, and stirring in old men regrets for ecstasy not seized and now forever past.

Our passions are ourselves.

It is the certainty that they possess the truth that makes men cruel.

What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance?

Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.

In art as in love, instinct is enough.

The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.

All the good writers of confessions, from Augustine onwards, are men who are still a little in love with their sins.

Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.

We have never heard the devil’s side of the story, God wrote all the book.

It is good to collect things, but it is better to go on walks.

Whatever one may do, one is always alone in the world.

If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.

My mother taught me the principles of hard work, setting my own goals and visualizing my future.

Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots.

On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock.

If there is anything that links the human to the divine, it is the courage to stand by a principle when everybody else rejects it.

You mustn’t compromise your principles, but you mustn’t humiliate the opposition. No one is more dangerous than one who is humiliated.

Be firm on principle but flexible on method.

At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.

Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle.