“A real man is he whose goodness is a part of himself.”

Virtue alone is not sufficient for the exercise of government; laws alone cannot carry themselves into practice.

Listen to a man’s words and look at the pupil of his eye. How can a man conceal his character?

In abundance prepare for scarcity.

Benevolence is one of the distinguishing characters of man.

Is it only the mouth and belly which are injured by hunger and thirst? Men’s minds are also injured by them.

Never lose your child’s heart.

The ways are two: love and want of love. That is all.

All things are already complete in us. There is no greater delight than to be conscious of right within us. If one strives to treat others as he would be treated by them, he shall not fail to come near the perfect life.

Those who follow the part of themselves which is great are great men; those who follow the part which is little are little men.

Friends are the siblings God never gave us.

Only those who develop their minds and spirits to the utmost can serve Heaven and fulfill their own destinies.

To act without clear understanding, to form habits without investigation, to follow a path all one’s life without knowing where it really leads; such is the behavior of the multitude.

Heaven sees as the people see. Heaven hears as the people hear.

He who goes to the bottom of his own heart knows his own nature; And knowing his own nature, he knows heaven.

Evil exists to glorify the good. Evil is negative good. It is a relative term. Evil can be transmuted into good. What is evil to one at one time, becomes good at another time to somebody else.

Human nature is good, just as water seeks low ground. There is no man who is not good, just as there is no water that does not flow downward.

A good engineer gets stale very fast if he doesn’t keep his hands dirty.

I set it down as a maxim, that it is good for a man to live where he can meet his betters, intellectual and social.

He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.

People, for reasons of their own, often fail to do things that would be good for them or good for society.

There’s still a part of me that thinks I have to write a really good novel. I’m not trying to say I’m not happy with the novels I’ve written in the past. But it always feels to me like there’s another one that I have to write that will really say what I want to say, and really paint this world that I can see hazily in my head.

Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.

Each man is good in the sight of the Great Spirit.

Good, the more communicated, more abundant grows.