“For it would have been better that man should have been born dumb, nay, void of all reason, rather than that he should employ the gifts of Providence to the destruction of his neighbor.”

Consequently the student who is devoid of talent will derive no more profit from this work than barren soil from a treatise on agriculture.

We excuse our sloth under the pretext of difficulty.

Medicine for the dead is too late.

An evil-speaker differs from an evil-doer only in the want of opportunity.

A great part of art consists in imitation. For the whole conduct of life is based on this: that what we admire in others we want to do ourselves.

Without natural gifts technical rules are useless.

A laugh costs too much when bought at the expense of virtue.

When we cannot hope to win, it is an advantage to yield.

It is much easier to try one’s hand at many things than to concentrate one’s powers on one thing.

The learned understand the reason of art; the unlearned feel the pleasure.

Write quickly and you will never write well; write well, and you will soon write quickly.

Sayings designed to raise a laugh are generally untrue and never complimentary. Laughter is never far removed from derision.

To swear, except when necessary, is becoming to an honorable man.

Give bread to a stranger, in the name of the universal brotherhood which binds together all men under the common father of nature.

If you direct your whole thought to work itself, none of the things which invade eyes or ears will reach the mind.

One should aim not at being possible to understand, but at being impossible to misunderstand.

Pride is the cause of the most damaging fall for the soul.

If your love destroys me, consider my destruction glorious.

The war between my mind and my heart has been the biggest destruction of my peace.

Find me someone who has gone to the darkest parts of their own character where they were so close to their own self-destruction and found a way to get up and out of it, and I will bow on my knees to you. You’re my teacher.

Without a vision people and the church become self-centered. People start finding fault with one another and the church self-destructs.

When work goes out of style we may expect to see civilization totter and fall.

The rate of profit is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin.

We need a new kind of politics. Not the politics of governance, but the politics of resistance. The politics of opposition. The politics of joining hands across the world and preventing certain destruction.