Everything excellent is as difficult as it is rare.

If we know exactly where we're going, exactly how to get there, and exactly what we'll see along the way, we won't learn anything.

Anger begins in folly, and ends in repentance.

Tomorrow hopes we have learned something from yesterday.

Thought can be so seductive and hypnotic that it absorbs your attention totally, so you become your thoughts.

Those who cannot work with their hearts achieve but a hollow, half-hearted success that breeds bitterness all around.

I have had good experience and trial of this world...I know what it is to be a subject, what to be a sovereign, what to have good neighbours, and sometimes meet evil willers. I have found treason in trust, seen great benefits little regarded.

There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it.

Do not say a little in many words, but a great deal in few!

Don't raise your voice, improve your argument.

Just remember, once you're over the hill you begin to pick up speed.

The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.

The only real laughter comes from despair.

An understanding of the natural world is a source of not only great curiosity, but great fulfilment.

We must live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.

Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.

Medicine heals diseases of the body, wisdom frees the soul from passions.

Compassion is the basis of morality.

Be frank and explicit. That is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and to confuse the minds of others.

It seems essential, in relationships and all tasks, that we concentrate only on what is most significant and important.