Mycenas, Greece - 20071. "Action and faith enslave thought, both of them in order not be troubled or inconvenienced by reflection, criticism, and doubt."
2. “Action is coarsened thought; thought becomes concrete, obscure, and unconscious.”
3. “A lively, disinterested, persistent liking for truth is extraordinarily rare. Action and faith enslave thought, both of them in order not to be troubled or inconvenienced by reflection, criticism or doubt.”
4. “Analysis kills spontaneity. The grain once ground into flour springs and germinates no more.”
5. “An error is the more dangerous the more truth it contains.”
6. "Charm is the quality in others that makes us more satisfied with ourselves."
7. "Cleverness is serviceable for everything, sufficient for nothing."
8. "Clever people will recognize and tolerate nothing but cleverness."
9. "Common sense is the measure of the possible; it is composed of experience and prevision; it is calculation applied to life."
10. “Common sense is calculation applied to life.”
11. "Destiny has two ways of crushing us -- by refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them."
12. “Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for others is genius.”
13. "Doubt of the reality of love ends by making us doubt everything."
14. "Every life is a profession of faith, and exercises an inevitable and silent influence."
15. “Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the soul over the flesh, that is to say over fear: fear of poverty, of suffering, of calumny, of illness, of loneliness and of death. There is no real piety without heroism. Heroism is the dazzling and glorious concentration of courage.”
16. "If nationality is consent, the state is compulsion."
17. "In every loving woman there is a priestess of the past -- a pious guardian of some affection, of which the object has disappeared."
18. “In health there is freedom. Health is the first of all liberties.”
19. “It is by teaching that we teach ourselves, by relating that we observe, by affirming that we examine, by showing that we look, by writing that we think, by pumping that we draw water into the well.”
20. “It is not what he had, or even what he does, which expresses the worth of a man, but what he is.”
21. ”Learn to... be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not. “
22. ”Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are traveling the dark journey with us. Oh, be swift to love, make hast to be kind.”
23. "Love is faith, and one faith leads to another."
24. ”Man becomes man only by his intelligence, but he is man only by his heart.”
25. "Materialism coarsens and petrifies everything, making everything vulgar, and every truth false."
26. "Melancholy is at the bottom of everything, just as at the end of all rivers is the sea. Can it be otherwise in a world where nothing lasts, where all that we have loved or shall love must die? Is death, then, the secret of life? The gloom of an eternal mourning enwraps, more or less closely, every serious and thoughtful soul, as night enwraps the universe."
27. “Mozart has the classic purity of light and the blue ocean; Beethoven the romantic grandeur which belongs to the storms of air and sea, and while the soul of Mozart seems to dwell on the ethereal peaks of Olympus, that of Beethoven climbs shuddering the storm-beaten sides of a Sinai. Blessed be they both! Each represents a moment of the ideal life, each does us good. Our love is due to both.”
28. “Mutual respect implies discretion and reserve even in love itself; it means preserving as much liberty as possible to those whose life we share. We must distrust our instinct of intervention, for the desire to make one's own will prevail is often disguised under the mask of solicitude.”
29. "Order is a great person's need and their true well being."
30. “Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires, but according to our powers.”
31. "Our systems, perhaps, are nothing more than an unconscious apology for our faults - a gigantic scaffolding whose object is to hide from us our favorite sin."
32. "Our true history is scarcely ever deciphered by others. The chief part of the drama is a monologue, or rather an intimate debate between God, our conscience, and ourselves. Tears, grieves, depressions, disappointments, irritations, good and evil thoughts, decisions, uncertainties, deliberations --all these belong to our secret, and are almost all incommunicable and intransmissible, even when we try to speak of them, and even when we write them down."
33. “Pure truth cannot be assimilated by the crowd; it must be communicated by contagion.”
34. “So as long as a person is capable of self-renewal, they are a living being.”
35. "Tears are the symbol of the inability of the soul to restrain its emotion and retain its self command."
36. "The best path through life is the highway."
37. "The fire which enlightens is the same fire which consumes."
38. "The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides..."
39. "The obscure only exists that it may cease to exist. In it lies the opportunity of all victory and all progress. Whether it call itself fatality, death, night, or matter, it is the pedestal of life, of light, of liberty and the spirit. For it represents resistance -- that is to say, the fulcrum of all activity, the occasion for its development and its triumph."
40. "The philosopher is like a man fasting in the midst of universal intoxication. He alone perceives the illusion of which all creatures are the willing playthings; he is less duped than his neighbor by his own nature. He judges more sanely, he sees things as they are. It is in this that his liberty consists -- in the ability to see clearly and soberly, in the power of mental record."
41. “The test of every religious, political, or educational system, is the man which it forms. If a system injures the intelligence it is bad. If it injures the character it is vicious. If it injures the conscience it is criminal.”
42. "Thought is a kind of opium; it can intoxicate us, while still broad awake; it can make transparent the mountains and everything that exists."
43. “To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.”
44. "To live we must conquer incessantly, we must have the courage to be happy."
45. "To surrender what is most profound and mysterious in one's being and personality at any price less than that of absolute reciprocity is profanation."
46. “True love is that which ennobles the personality, fortifies the heart, and sanctifies the existence.”
47. "Uncertainty is the refuge of hope."’
48. ”We are free only so far as we are not dupes of ourselves, our pretexts, our instincts, our temperament. We are freed by energy and the critical spirit -- that is to say, by detachment of soul, by self-government. So that we are enslaved, but susceptible of freedom; we are bound, but capable of shaking off our bonds.”
49. “We are never more discontented with others than when we are discontented with ourselves. The consciousness of wrongdoing makes us irritable, and our heart in its cunning quarrels with what is outside it, in order that it may deafen the clamour within.”
50. "We become actors without realizing it, and actors without wanting to."
51. “What governs men is the fear of truth.”
52. "What we call little things are merely the causes of great things; they are the beginning, the embryo, and it is the point of departure which, generally speaking, decides the whole future of an existence. One single black speck may be the beginning of a gangrene, of a storm, of a revolution."
53. "Will localizes us; thought universalizes us."
54. “Without passion man is a mere latent force and possibility, like the flint which awaits the shock of the iron before it can give forth its spark.”
