“The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.”

Blessed are the weak who think that they are good because they have no claws.

God is not He who is, but That which is.

Self-preservation is the primary and only foundation of virtue.

I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.

Reason connot defeat emotion, an emotion can only be displaced or overcome by a stronger emotion.

Nothing in nature is by chance. Something appears to be chance only because of our lack of knowledge.

The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.

If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.

There can be no hope without fear, and no fear without hope.

He who seeks equality between unequals seeks an absurdity.

Nature has no goal in view, and final causes are only human imaginings.

Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.

I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion.

Pride is pleasure arising from a man’s thinking too highly of himself.

The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.

What Paul says about Peter tells us more about Paul than about Peter.

Every mind has a horizon in respect to its present intellectual capacity but not in respect to its future intellectual capacity.

Make your own decision, based on your deepest intuitive wisdom and knowledge. You may make the right decision or the wrong one, but whatever happens, it is your best shot, and you will strengthen your capacity for future action.

Paying attention and awareness are universal capacities of human beings.

We fear discovering that we are more than we think we are… That we actually have the guts, the perserverance, the capacity… because, if it’s true, then we become estranged from all we know.

To the composition of novels and romances, nothing is necessary but paper, pens, and ink, with the manual capacity of using them.

Leadership is the capacity to influence others through inspiration motivated by passion, generated by vision, produced by a conviction, ignited by a purpose.

It is strange that the years teach us patience; that the shorter our time, the greater our capacity for waiting.

Fear narrows the little entrance of our heart. It shrinks up our capacity to love. It freezes up our power to give ourselves.