Against an adversary who attacks you with insults and insults rather than with arguments you have no more need of defense than against a madman or a dead drunken man who pursues you with insults.
When you make assessments, positive or negative, about a man, about his deeds or his work, don't forget that they are also implicitly a certificate that you give yourself regarding the strength and level of your own critical spirit. By any criticism of another, you are somehow betraying who you are and where you stand.
Many times it is a duty to see in darker colors than it actually is; so that from this view springs a more determined struggle for the better.
Pursue wisdom and approach the virtues; honor worthy persons, keep friendships with the greatest faith; seek counsel from the wise; be kind to the little ones; humanely and justly, as much as is permitted to you, seek honors, praises, glory, and fame.
There are people whose attitude in life is nothing more than a continuous oscillation between altitude towards the small and flatness towards the big.
Wagging your elbows is no more humane than wagging your tail.
I prefer to be with the beautiful, even if the world turns out to be so cruel that the beautiful can no longer live in its midst. I prefer to be with the truth, even if the whole world is destined to follow the lie.
To judge works and people fairly requires greater distance in time and perspective.
A man should try only what he can.
To thoughtful people all past or present events help them to judge future ones.
A man must be judged on the whole of his principles or character.
Since you consent to live, don't complain in the desert about all the filth of life.
Don't ask too much from life, if you don't want to know how little it can give you.
Man can be judged only by what he does... We cannot know a subjective experience... except to the extent of its objectification.
We are running towards a new spirituality, other than that of religion, towards a value in which mysticism does not obscure reason. More strongly than ever we are pushed to ask ourselves the tormenting questions of consciousness, on the problem of existence...
What good is it to see only the bitterness and hardships of life? Better to follow its dynamism, the creative inspirations of man, eternally driven by thoughts that elevate him. I will remain until the end a being who aspires to the heights, to building the sublime edifice of human effort in the midst of this wonderful universe.
Let us choose what is useful instead of pleasant, if we are not permitted to choose both at once.
Whoever wants to live among people must accept them as they are, and whoever wants to be their master must understand them.
I am not one of those who consider trifles knowledge; silence, stupidity and pretense, art.
It is grossly impolite to give advice to someone who hasn't asked for it: it means, from the start, to consider him an imbecile.
I detest aggressive people and I am disgusted by the one who doesn't respond sharply and thickly to the aggressor. Brutes grow fat from the sludge of general cowardice.
In everything, both the beginning and its consequences weigh well.
Fix in your mind (right now) a rule and an ideal of behavior to which you will strictly conform both in solitude and among people.
If evil is spoken of thee, and it be true, stand up; if they are lies, laugh.
The wise man must not repent, but foresee.
Never trust the man who has reason to suspect you that you know he has done you harm.
We have to make sense of everything.
Do not allow yourself to be defeated by anything that is foreign to your spirit: and when you find yourself in the midst of life's misfortunes, think that you carry within you a supporting force, something strong and indestructible, like a diamond axis around which all the small facts that make up the fabric of your daily life move: whatever events you pass through - whether they are part of what we call favorable, adverse, or humiliating - you remain determined and head up , so that at least this can be said about you: that you are human.
The moral sentiments of each man tend not to determine his own actions, but those of others. This does not prevent them either from being perfectly honest or from being worthy of being called "moral". Everyone behaves properly for fear of the indignation of his fellows, an indignation that he knows very well, because he feels it sincerely and intensely every time another behaves badly.
We live to manifest. Moral and aesthetic rules are the same. Any work that does not manifest is useless by its very purpose. Any man who does not manifest is useless and evil.