A room without books is like a body without a soul.
Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century: 1. Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others; 2. Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected; 3. Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it; 4. Refusing to set aside trivial preferences; 5. Neglecting development and refinement of the mind; 6. Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.
Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.
It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment.
The traitor rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
Where there’s life, there’s hope.
To teach is a necessity, to please is a sweetness, to persuade is a victory.
Knowledge which is divorced from justice may be called cunning rather than wisdom.
As long as I breathe, I hope.
No one is so old as to think that he cannot live one more year.
We are bound by the law, so that we may be free.
A man of faith is also full of courage.
The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.
To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.
History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illumines reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life and brings us tidings of antiquities.
Politicians are not born; they are excreted.
Men decide far more problems by hate, love, lust, rage, sorrow, joy, hope, fear, illusion or some other inward emotion, than by reality, authority, any legal standard, judicial precedent, or statute.
To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?
Hours and days and months and years go by; the past returns no more, and what is to be we cannot know; but whatever the time gives us in which we live, we should therefore be content.
What one has, one ought to use; and whatever he does, he should do with all his might.
Kindness is stronger than fear.
The mind becomes accustomed to things by the habitual sight of them, and neither wonders nor inquires about the reasons for things it sees all the time.
For there is but one essential justice which cements society, and one law which establishes this justice. This law is right reason, which is the true rule of all commandments and prohibitions. Whoever neglects this law, whether written or unwritten, is necessarily unjust and wicked.
True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands, and averts from wrongdoing by its prohibitions.
I prefer the most unfair peace to the most righteous war.
Friendship is the most valuable of all human possessions.
They who say that we should love our fellow-citizens but not foreigners, destroy the universal brotherhood of mankind, with which benevolence and justice would perish forever.
If we are not ashamed to think it, we should not be ashamed to say it.
Cultivation of the mind is as necessary as food to the body.
Let us assume that entertainment is the sole end of reading; even so I think you would hold that no mental employment is so broadening to the sympathies or so enlightening to the understanding. Other pursuits belong not to all times, all ages, all conditions; but this gives stimulus to our youth and diversion to our old age; this adds a charm to success, and offers a haven of consolation to failure. Through the night-watches, on all our journeyings, and in our hours of ease, it is our unfailing companion.
Thus nature has no love for solitude, and always leans, as it were, on some support; and the sweetest support is found in the most intimate friendship.
Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joys, and dividing our grief.
Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself.
A happy life consists in tranquillity of mind.
If you would abolish covetousness, you must abolish its mother, abundance.
The famous Lucius Cassius, whom the Roman people used to regard as a very honest and wise judge, was in the habit of asking, time and again, ‘To whose benefit?
Diseases of the soul are more dangerous and more numerous than those of the body.
Time obliterates the fictions of opinion and confirms the decisions of nature.
God’s law is ‘right reason.’ When perfectly understood it is called ‘wisdom.’ When applied by government in regulating human relations it is called ‘justice’.
Not for ourselves alone are we born.
We must not only obtain Wisdom: we must enjoy her.
