This above all: to thine own self be true, / And it must follow, as the night the day, / Thou canst not then be false to any man. –William Shakespeare, poet and dramatist (1564-1616).

This above all: to thine own self be true, / And it must follow, as the night the day, / Thou canst not then be false to any man. –William Shakespeare, poet and dramatist (1564-1616).
“Why is it so painful to watch a person sink? Because there is something unnatural in it, for nature demands personal progress, evolution, and every backward step means wasted energy. ”
August Strindberg
“No man can be happy without a friend, nor be sure of his friend until he is unhappy.”
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Español: Ralph Waldo Emerson. Français : Ralph Waldo Emerson Italiano: Ralph Waldo Emerson Nederlands: Fotogravure van Ralph Waldo Emerson Português: Ralph Waldo Emerson Русский: Ральф Уолдо Эмерсон Svenska: Ralph Waldo Emerson (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted. –Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882).
Love: a temporary insanity, curable by marriage. –Ambrose Bierce, author and editor (1842-1914)
“An investment in knowledge still yields the best returns.”
“Some people did what their neighbors did so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.”
—George Eliot, Middle March
“The wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.”
—Thomas Paine.
Ovid by Anton von Werner. "Bibliothek des allgemeinen und praktischen Wissens. Bd. 5" (1905), Abriß der Weltliteratur, Seite 51 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
“He who is not prepared today will be less so tomorrow.”
—Ovid
What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness. –Leo Tolstoy, novelist and philosopher (1828-1910).
“The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led. ”
—Edgar Allan Poe
Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold. –Leo Tolstoy, novelist and philosopher (1828-1910).
“An envious heart makes a treacherous ear.”
Zora Neale Hurston, “Their Eyes Were Watching God“
“Your faith is what you believe, not what you know. ”
—Mark Twain
Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on “I am not too sure.” –H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)
Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; Unbelief, in denying them.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Walking is also an ambulation of mind. –Gretel Ehrlich, novelist, poet, and essayist (b. 1946)
The only way to tell the truth is to speak with kindness. Only the words of a loving man can be heard.
—Henry Thoreau
“Every pursuit is great when greatly pursued.”
Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.
—William Shakespeare
” This above all to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.” –
Shakespeare: Hamlet I.iii.
“With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now. ”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.
—Oscar Wilde
“The secret of success is constancy of purpose.”
—Benjamin Disraeli
“My own experience and development deepen every day my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy.”
—George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), novelist (1819-1880).