My best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.

Most people would rather give than get affection.

Wicked men obey from fear; good men, from love.

To love someone is to identify with them.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

Wit is educated insolence.

We cannot learn without pain.

Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.

This is the reason why mothers are more devoted to their children than fathers: it is that they suffer more in giving them birth and are more certain that they are their own.

The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.

The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.

The energy of the mind is the essence of life.

We praise a man who feels angry on the right grounds and against the right persons and also in the right manner at the right moment and for the right length of time.

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

The society that loses its grip on the past is in danger, for it produces men who know nothing but the present, and who are not aware that life had been, and could be, different from what it is.

The secret to humor is surprise.

The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousand fold.

The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor; it is the one thing that cannot be learned from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity of the dissimilar.

The beauty of the soul shines out when a man bears with composure one heavy mischance after another, not because he does not feel them, but because he is a man of high and heroic temper.

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

Teenagers these days are out of control. They eat like pigs, they are disrespectful of adults, they interrupt and contradict their parents, and they terrorize their teachers.

Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotism.

Quality is not an act, it is a habit.

Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.