That is why all great men are modest: they consistently measure themselves not in comparison to other people but to the idea of perfection ever present in their minds, an ideal infinitely clearer and greater than any common people have, and they also realize how far they are from fulfilling their ideal.

Freedom is the dream you dream While putting thought in chains again --

If content with himself and mankind, a man is never harsh or curt.

He who has the courage to laugh is almost as much a master of the world as he who is ready to die.

Boredom is the most sublime of all human emotions because it expresses the fact that the human spirit, in a certain sense, is greater than the entire universe. Boredom is an expression of a profound despair at not finding anything that can satisfy the soul's boundless needs.

People are ridiculous only when they try or seem to be that which they are not.

Nothing in the world is so rare as a person one can always put up with.