“Do the duty which lies nearest to you, the second duty will then become clearer.”

Nothing builds self-esteem and self-confidence like accomplishment.

See deep enough, and you see musically.

A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.

Without kindness there can be no true joy.

There are good and bad times, but our mood changes more often than our fortune.

The first duty of man is that of subduing fear.

If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it.

There can be no acting or doing of any kind till it be recognized that there is a thing to be done; the thing once recognized, doing in a thousand shapes becomes possible.

One monster there is in the world, the idle man.

A person who is gifted sees the essential point and leaves the rest as surplus.

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.

A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.

Weak eyes are fondest of glittering objects.

Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will.

Work is the grand cure of all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind.

It is worse for a liar to tell the truth than for a lover of truth to lie.

One should go easy on smashing other people’s lies. Better to concentrate on one’s own.

Jealousy is perhaps the most involuntary of all strong emotions. It steals consciousness, it lies deeper than thought. It is always there, like a blackness in the eye, it discolours the world.

There is nothing worse than words of kindness that lie.

You were fully clothed in lies, I was naked in truth. Still, when morning came It was I who survived the cold.

Neither a wise nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.

Just think how many thoughts a blanket smothers while one lies alone in bed, and how many unhappy dreams it keeps warm.

No, said the priest, you don’t need to accept everything as true, you only have to accept it as necessary. Depressing view, said K. The lie made into the rule of the world.