We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

Progress is the domination of chaos by mind and purpose, of matter by form and will. It need not be continuous to be real.

The time when you need to do something is when no one else is willing to do it, when people are saying it can't be done.

From barbarism to civilization requires a century; from civilization to barbarism needs but a day.

In Constantinople, more Christians were slaughtered by Christians in the years 342-343 than by all the persecutions by pagans in the history of Rome.

Cultivate your garden… Do not depend upon teachers to educate you … follow your own bent, pursue your curiosity bravely, express yourself, make your own harmony… In the end, education, like happiness, is individual, and must come to us from life and from ourselves. There is no way; each pilgrim must make his own path. "Happiness," said Chamfort, "is not easily won; it is hard to find it in ourselves, and impossible to find it elsewhere.

It is one of the most culpable oversights of nature that virtue and beauty so often come in separate packages.