What monstrosities would walk the streets were some people's faces as unfinished as their minds.

What monstrosities would walk the streets were some people's faces as unfinished as their minds.

Firmness of purpose is one of the most necessary sinews of character, and one of the best instruments of success. read more

Firmness of purpose is one of the most necessary sinews of character, and one of the best instruments of success. Without it genius wastes its efforts in a maze of inconsistencies.

The trouble with people is not that they don't know but that they know so much that ain't so.

The trouble with people is not that they don't know but that they know so much that ain't so.

In the alchemy of man's soul almost all noble attributes- courage, honor, love, hope, faith, duty, loyalty, and so on- read more

In the alchemy of man's soul almost all noble attributes- courage, honor, love, hope, faith, duty, loyalty, and so on- can be transmuted into ruthlessness. Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us. Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion, even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.

Children sweeten labours; but they make misfortunes more bitter. They increase the care of life; but they mitigate the remembrance read more

Children sweeten labours; but they make misfortunes more bitter. They increase the care of life; but they mitigate the remembrance of death. The perpetuity of generation is common to beasts; but memory, merit, and noble works, are proper to men. And surely a man shall see the noblest works and foundations have proceeded from childless men; which have sought to express the images of their minds, where those of their bodies have failed.

To be a human being means to possess a feeling of inferiority which constantly presses towards its own conquest...The greater read more

To be a human being means to possess a feeling of inferiority which constantly presses towards its own conquest...The greater the feeling of inferiority that has been experienced, the more powerful is the urge for conquest and the more violent the emotional agitation.

The ideas which now pass for brilliant innovations and advances are in fact mere revivals of ancient errors, and a read more

The ideas which now pass for brilliant innovations and advances are in fact mere revivals of ancient errors, and a further proof of the dictum that those who are ignorant of the past are condemned to repeat it.

...brainpower is the scarcest commodity and the only one of real value.

...brainpower is the scarcest commodity and the only one of real value.

The class of those who have the ability to think their own thoughts is separated by an unbridgeable gulf from read more

The class of those who have the ability to think their own thoughts is separated by an unbridgeable gulf from the class of those who cannot.