"There is no piece of foolishness but it can be corrected by intelligence or accident; no piece of wisdom but it can miscarry by lack of intelligence or by accident."

"Work makes companionship."

"Piety is not an end, but a means: a means of attaining the highest culture by the purest tranquillity of soul. Hence it may be observed that those who set up piety as an end and object are mostly hypocrites."

"A man is really alive only when he delights in the good-will of others."

"When a man is old he must do more than when he was young."

"If I am to listen to another man's opinion, it must be expressed positively. Of things problematical I have enough in myself."

"Everything that frees our spirit without giving us control of ourselves is ruinous."

"The greatest piece of good fortune is that which corrects our deficiencies and redeems our mistakes."

"Wisdom lies only in truth."

"Every man must think after his own fashion; for on his own path he finds a truth, or a kind of truth, which helps him through life. But he must not give himself the rein; he must control himself; mere naked instinct does not become him."

"How can a man come to know himself? Never by thinking, but by doing. Try to do your duty, and you will know at once what you are worth. But what is your duty? The claims of the day."

"Our plans and designs should be so perfect in truth and beauty, that in touching them the world could only mar. We should thus have the advantage of setting right what is wrong, and restoring what is destroyed."

"Of all our faults, the one we are most easily in agreement with is laziness; we are persuaded that it is attached to all the peaceful virtues and that, without entirely destroying the others, it only suspends their functions."

"True eloquence is saying all you need to do, and only saying what you need to do."

"We try to make virtues out of the faults we have no wish to correct."

"General ideas and great conceit are always in a fair way to bring about terrible misfortune."

"We are so used to disguising ourselves from others that we finally disguise ourselves from ourselves."

"The world rewards the appearances of merit more often than merit itself."

"Our greed often troubles him by making us run to so many things at once that, in order to desire too much the less important, we miss the most important."

"A clever man must regulate the rank of his interests and lead them each in his order."

"The love of justice is in most men only the fear of suffering injustice."

"It is better to use our minds to endure the misfortunes that happen to us than to foresee those that may happen to us."

"Confession of our faults is the next thing to innocence."

"As it is the character of great minds to make many things heard in a few words, small minds, on the contrary, have the gift of speaking a lot, and of saying nothing."

"The desire to appear skillful often prevents one from becoming so."

"Happy people hardly correct themselves; they always believe they are right when fortune supports their bad behavior."

"The readiness to believe evil without having examined it enough is an effect of pride and laziness. We want to find the culprits; and we don't want to bother looking at the crimes."

"Mediocre minds usually condemn anything that is beyond their reach."

"Only those with real strength of character can have real gentleness; those who look gentle are usually merely weak"

"There are people so light and frivolous that they are as far removed from having real flaws as they are solid qualities."

"The longer I live, the more it grieves me to see man, who occupies his supreme place for the very purpose of imposing his will upon nature, and freeing himself and his from an outrageous necessity,—to see him taken up with some false notion, and doing just the opposite of what he wants to do; and then, because the whole bent of his mind is spoilt, bungling miserably over everything."

"Be genuine and strenuous; earn for yourself, and look for, grace from those in high places; from the powerful, favour; from the active and the good, advancement; from the many, affection; from the individual, love."

"Penitence follows hasty decisions."

"Pride has more part than kindness in the remonstrances we make to those who make mistakes; and we do not take them back so much to correct them as to persuade them that we are exempt from them."

"Pardon one offence and you encourage the commission of many."

"It is a bad plan that admits of no modification."

"Whoso is content with pure experience and acts upon it has enough of truth. The growing child is wise in this sense."

"When a man asks too much and delights in complication, he is exposed to perplexity."

"Every great idea is a tyrant when it first appears; hence the advantages which it produces change all too quickly into disadvantages. It is possible, then, to defend and praise any institution that exists, if its beginnings are brought to remembrance, and it is shown that everything which was true of it at the beginning is true of it still."

"There are two powers that make for peace: what is right, and what is fitting."

"Generosity wins favour for every one, especially when it is accompanied by modesty."

"Not everywhere where there is water, are there frogs; but where you have frogs, there you will find water."

"Whims and eccentricities that grow stale are all useless, rank nonsense."

"The man who is up and doing should see to it that what he does is right. Whether or not right is done, is a matter which should not trouble him."

"It is said that vain self-praise stinks in the nostrils. That may be so; but for the kind of smell which comes from unjust blame by others the public has no nose at all."

"Dirt glitters as long as the sun shines."

"The finest achievement for a man of thought is to have fathomed what may be fathomed, and quietly to revere the unfathomable."

"Let us remember how great the ancients were; and especially how the Socratic school holds up to us the source and standard of all life and action, and bids us not indulge in empty speculation, but live and do."

"Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage."

"Those who focus too much on small things usually become incapable of big ones."