Smile, for everyone lacks self-confidence and more than any other one thing a smile reassures them.
For intelligent people, action often means escape from thought, but it is a reasonable and a wise escape.
Lost Illusion is the undisclosed title of every novel.
There are very few really brilliant men who have not had at least one madman among their ancestors.
Live as if you were eternal.
Without a family, man, alone in the world, trembles with the cold.
You don't love a man for what he says, but love what he says because you love him.
A friend loves you for your intelligence, a mistress for your charm, but your family's love is unreasoning; you were born into it and are of its flesh and blood. Nevertheless it can irritate you more than any group of people in the world.
Old age is far more than white hair, wrinkles, the feeling that it is too late and the game finished, that the stage belongs to the rising generations. The true evil is not the weakening of the body, but the indifference of the soul.
If men could regard the events of their own lives with more open minds, they would frequently discover that they did not really desire the things they failed to obtain.
The reading of a fine book is an uninterrupted dialogue in which the book speaks and our soul replies.
Everything that is in agreement with our personal desires seems true; everything that is not puts us in a rage.
The really great novel tends to be the exact negative of its author's life.
Self-pity comes so naturally to all of us.
We appreciate frankness from those who like us. Frankness from others is called insolence.
Time is a factor in all action. An imperfect scheme put into action at the proper time is better than a perfect one accomplished too late.
The longer the road to love, the keener is the pleasure...
Stupidity is a factor to be reckoned with in human affairs. The true leader always expects to encounter it, and prepares to endure it patiently so long as it is normal stupidity. He knows that his ideas will be distorted, his orders carelessly executed; and that there will be jealousy among his assistants. He takes these inevitable phenomena into account, and instead of attempting to find men without faults, who are non-existent, he tries to make use of the best men at his disposal - as they are, and not as they ought to be.
All of us, from time to time, need a plunge into freedom and novelty, after which routine and discipline will seem delightful by contrast.
People are what you make them. A scornful look turns into a complete fool a man of average intelligence. A contemptuous indifference turns into an enemy a woman who, well treated, might have been an angel.
There are certain persons for whom pure Truth is a poison.
A gentleman is never in a hurry.
The art of reading is in great part that of acquiring a better understanding of life from one's encounter with it in a book.
Information is not culture. In the mind of a truly educated person, facts are organized, and they make up a living world in the image of the world of reality.
It is not events and the things one sees and enjoys that produce happiness, but a state of mind which can endow events with its own quality, and we must hope for the duration of this state rather than the recurrence of pleasurable events.
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