The highest stage of moral culture occurs when we realize that we can control our own thoughts.
If I remember how fiercely the representatives of the church attacked me, it seems funny that I myself once intended to become a priest.
Ignorance is always more certain than knowledge, and only the ignorant can say with certainty that the sciences will never be able to solve any problem.
There is nothing more unbearable than inactivity.
Never befriend a man you cannot respect.
Talks of glory, honor, pleasure and wealth are paltry compared to love.
The strongest difference between humans and animals is moral sense or consciousness. And her dominance is expressed in the short but powerful very expressive word "must".
The ability to blush is the most characteristic and human of all human characteristics.
The man who decided to waste even an hour of his time has not yet come to understand the value of life.
In this world, anyone who is able to lighten another's burden is useful.
If you wish to reward honesty, if you wish to encourage good, to help the careless, to root out evil, or to correct defects, education is the only thing necessary, the only end worthy of consideration.
A man alive and without a mind is more terrible than a dead man.
Of all the inventions and discoveries in science and the arts, of all the important consequences of the surprising development of technique, the first place is the printing of books...
Literature... is bound to be true to the people, bound to fight passionately and ardently for their progress, prosperity and happiness.
An outright or evasive lie, expressed or not, is always a lie.
Love is the most interesting and the most excusable of all human weaknesses.
Life is given to us with the indispensable condition of defending it valiantly until the last moment of life.
Something high is not always above all, and something low is not always base.
There is still no such hill to the top of which perseverance does not eventually reach.
The first rule of business: do for others what you would have others do for you.
The truth is always brave.
Diligence is the soul of all work and the key to prosperity.
Man must respect his vocation, whatever it may be, and ask others to respect it, if this vocation is worthy of respect.
Man cannot truly improve himself if he does not help others to improve themselves.
Too good a life often spoils the character, as too much food spoils the stomach, and in these cases both body and soul are successfully cured only by remedies not only disagreeable, but even disgusting.
The greatest good you can do for another is not only to share your wealth with him but also to discover his own wealth.
We are all born for love, this is the principle of existence and its only purpose.
All life is a run. There is no other truth.
Two nations between whom there is no connection and no sympathy, who simply do not know each other's customs, thoughts, and feelings like the inhabitants of two different planets; who raise their children differently, eat different food, learn different manners; who live by different laws... The rich and the poor.
Actions do not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.