TuesdayAug 05, 2025
Quotes: 53419 Authors: 9969
Great men never make bad use of their superiority; they see it, and feel it, and are not less modest. The more they have, the more they know their own deficiencies.
I have suffered too much in this world not to hope for another.
The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless
To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written.
Government originated in the attempt to find a form of association that defends and protects the person and property of each with the common force of all.
Force does not constitute right...obedience is due only to legitimate powers.
He who pretends to look upon death without fear, lies
Take the course opposite to custom and you will almost always do well.
There exists one book, which, to my taste, furnishes the happiest treatise of natural education. What then is this marvelous book? Is it Aristotle? Is it Pliny, is it Buffon? No-it is Robinson Crusoe.
The mechanism she employs is much more powerful than ours, for all her levers move the human heart.
Never exceed your rights, and they will soon become unlimited.
Women, in general, are not attracted to art at all, nor knowledge, and not at all to genius.
What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?
Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.
Provided a man is not mad, he can be cured of every folly but vanity.
In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and never will exist.
The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he transforms his strength into right, and obedience into duty.
The training of children is a profession, where we must know how to waste time in order to save it
To live is not merely to breathe: it is to act; it is to make use of our organs, senses, facultiesof all those parts of ourselves which give us the feeling of existence.
To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know.
One loses all the time which he might employ to better purpose.
At length I recollected the thoughtless saying of a great princess, who, on being informed that the country people had no bread, replied, 'Let them eat cake'.
The thirst after happiness is never extinguished in the heart of man
It is too difficult to think nobly when one only thinks to get a living.
He thinks like a philosopher, but governs like a king.
Temperance and labor are the two best physicians of man; labor sharpens the appetite and temperance prevents from indulging to excess.
Taste is, so to speak, the microscope of the judgment.
People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.
He who is the most slow in making a promise is the most faithful in the performance of it.
Every man has a right to risk his own life for the preservation of it.
My liveliest delight is in having conquered myself.
The right of conquest has no foundation other than the right of the strongest.
Remorse sleeps during a prosperous period but wakes up in adversity.
Men and nations can only be reformed in their youth; they become incorrigible as they grow old.
Remember the parable of talentsthe story of the three servants who had received talents, five, two and one respectively? When their master returned they all gave account of their stewardship. The first two had doubled their capital. Each of them said so in sixteen words and their work was pronounced, 'Well done, good and faithful servant.' The third servant had accomplished absolutely nothing but his report took forty-three words, three times as long as each of the other two reports. Dont be like servant number three. Make good! Dont explain your failure! Do the thing you are expected to do! Then you wont have to explain why you didn't, couldnt, wouldnt, or shouldnt. Efficiency! That is the soul-satisfying joy of making good. Doing your work just a little better than anyone else gives you the margin of success. Making good required no explanation. Failure required forty-three words.
Nature never deceives us; it is always we who deceive ourselves.
Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.
Men will argue more philosophically about the human heart; but women will read the heart of man better than they.
A man speaks of what he knows, a woman of what pleases her: the one requires knowledge, the other taste.
Living is not breathing but doing.
Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.
It is to law alone that men owe justice and liberty. It is this salutary organ, of the will of all which establishes in civil rights the natural equality between men. It is this celestial voice which dictates to each citizen the precepts of public reason, and teaches him to act according to the rules of his own judgment and not to behave inconsistently with himself. It is with this voice alone that political leaders should speak when. they command.
Accent is the soul of language; it gives to it both feeling and truth.
Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.
An honest man nearly always thinks justly.
Hatred, as well as love, renders its votaries credulous.
Supreme happiness consists in self-content.
Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.
Good laws lead to the making of better ones; bad ones bring about worse.
Everything is good when it leaves the hands of the Creator; everything degenerates in the hands of man.
Socrates died like a philosopher; Jesus Christ died like a God.
Universal silence must be taken to imply the consent of the people.
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
The body politic, like the human body, begins to die from its birth, and bears in itself the causes of its destruction.
The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences.
Free people, remember this maxim: We may acquire liberty, But it is never recovered if it is once lost.
Physical evils destroy themselves, or they destroy us.
We do not know what is really good or bad fortune.
Temperance and labor are the two best physicians of man; labor sharpens the appetite, and temperance prevents from indulging to excess.
Falsehood is susceptible of an infinity of combinations, But truth has only one mode of being.
Virtue is the state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.
Taste is, so to speak, the microscope of judgment.
Fame is but the breath of people, And that often unwholesome.
Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.
Man is born free, yet he is everywhere in chains.
Days of absence, sad and dreary, Clothed in sorrow's dark array, Days of absence, I am weary; She I love is far away.
Our greatest misfortunes come to us from ourselves.
A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue.
Abstract truth is the eye of reason.
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