Everything excellent is as difficult as it is rare.

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.

It is better to be looked over than overlooked.

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.

Throw your heart over the fence and the rest will follow.

Desire is poverty. Desire is the greatest impurity of the mind. Desire is the motive force for action. Desire in the mind is the real impurity. Even a spark of desire is a very great evil.

I mistrust the judgement of every man in a case in which his own wishes are concerned.

Be realistic: Plan for a miracle

The only real laughter comes from despair.

Accuracy is the twin brother of honesty; inaccuracy, of dishonesty.

We never see ourselves as others see us.

In moments of great grief, that’s where you look and immerse yourself. You realise you are not immortal, you are not a god, you are part of the natural world and you come to accept that.

Circumstances do not make a man, they reveal him.

If I speak of myself in different ways, that is because I look at myself in different ways.

Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more

Dark and difficult times lie ahead. Soon we must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy.

Early to bed and early to rise, Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.

There is geometry in the humming of the strings. There is music in the spacing of the spheres.

Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.

Promises are like crying babies in a theater, they should be carried out at once.