Personality is born out of pain. It is the fire shut up in the flint. - Letters to His Son, read more

Personality is born out of pain. It is the fire shut up in the flint. - Letters to His Son, W. B. Yeats and Others.

The man who will follow precedent, but never create one, is merely an obvious example of the routineer. You find read more

The man who will follow precedent, but never create one, is merely an obvious example of the routineer. You find him desperately numerous in the civil service, in the official bureaus. To him government is something given as unconditionally, as absolutely as ocean or hill. He goes on winding the tape that he finds. His imagination has rarely extricated itself from under the administrative machine to gain any sense of what a human, temporary contraption the whole affair is. What he thinks is the heavens above him is nothing but the roof.

The suspicious believe everybody to be suspicious; the liar feels secure in the thought that he is not so foolish read more

The suspicious believe everybody to be suspicious; the liar feels secure in the thought that he is not so foolish as to believe that there is such a phenomenon as a strictly truthful person; the envious see envy in every soul; the miser thinks everybody is eager to get his money;...and the abandoned sensualist looks upon the saint as a hypocrite

Take a look at your natural river. What are you? Stop playing games with yourself. Where's your river going? Are read more

Take a look at your natural river. What are you? Stop playing games with yourself. Where's your river going? Are you riding with it? Or are you rowing against it? Don't you see that there is no effort if you're riding with your river?

A traveler of taste will notice that the wise are polite all over the world, but the fool only at read more

A traveler of taste will notice that the wise are polite all over the world, but the fool only at home.

If you focus on results, you will never change. If you focus on change, you will get results.

If you focus on results, you will never change. If you focus on change, you will get results.

The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.

The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.

We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified.

We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified.

If intellection and knowledge were mere passion from without, or the bare reception of extraneous and adventitious forms, then no read more

If intellection and knowledge were mere passion from without, or the bare reception of extraneous and adventitious forms, then no reason could be given at all why a mirror or looking-glass should not understand; whereas it cannot so much as sensibly perceive those images which it receives and reflects to us.