There is one further distinguishing characteristic of man which is very specific indeed and about which there can be no dispute, and that is the faculty of self-improvement - a faculty which, with the help of circumstance, progressively develops all our other faculties.

It is as if my heart and my brain did not belong to the same person. Feelings come quicker than lightning and fill my soul, but they bring me no illumination; they burn me and dazzle me.

A paralyzed man who wants to walk OR an agile man who does not want to walk will both remain neutral in nature.

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.

You are worried about seeing him spend his early years in doing nothing. What! Is it nothing to be happy? Nothing to skip, play and run around all day long? Never in his life will he be so busy again.

Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.

He who eats in idleness that which he himself has not earned, steals it; and a capitalist whom the state pays for doing nothing differs little in my eyes from a brigand, who lives at the expense of passers-by.