If we take people only as they are, then we make them worse; if we treat them as if they were what they should be, then we bring them to where they can be brought.

In politics people throw themselves, as on a sickbed, from one side to the other in the belief they will lie more comfortably.

Several classical sayings that one likes to repeat had quite a different meaning from the ones later times attributed to them.

If you start to think of your physical and moral condition, you usually find that you are sick.

To be pleased with one's limits is a wretched state.

There are but few who have ideas and are, at the same time, capable of action. Ideas enlarge but stymie, action enlivens but confines.

The sea is flowing ever, The land retains it never.