The great majority of men are but tangled skeins, imperfect keyboards, so many specimens of restless or stagnant chaos--and what makes their situation almost hopeless is the fact that they take pleasure in it. There is no curing a sick man who believes himself in health.

Sadness takes up the pen more readily than joy.

Every situation is an equilibrium of forces; every life is a struggle between opposing forces working within the limits of a certain equilibrium

The germs of all things are in every heart, and the greatest criminals as well as the greatest heroes are but different modes of ourselves.

Pay bad people with your goodness; fight their hatred with your kindness. Even if you do not achieve a victory over other people, you will conquer yourself.

To be always ready a man must be able to cut a knot, for everything cannot be untied.

He who asks of life nothing but the improvement of his own nature... is less liable than anyone else to miss and waste life.