Seven times have I despised my soul:
the first time when I saw her being meek that she might attain height;
the second time when I saw her limping before the crippled;
the third time when she was given to choose between the hard and the easy, and she chose the easy;
the fourth time when she committed a wrong, and comforted herself that others also commit wrong;
the fifth time when she forbore for weakness, and attributed her patience to strength;
the sixth time when she despised the ugliness of a face, and knew not that it was one of her own masks;
and the seventh time when she sang a song of praise, and deemed it a virtue.
— Gibran
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
— Oscar Wilde
What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals!
— Shakespeare
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.
— Hazlitt
What a chimera, ten, is man! What a novelty! What a monster, what a chaos, what a subject of contradiction, what a prodigy! A judge of all things, feeble worm of the earth, depositary of the truth, cloaca of uncertainty and error, the glory and shame of the universe.
— Pascal
Reason is a very inadequate term with which to comprehend the forms of man’s cultural life in all their richness and variety. But all these forms are symbolic forms. Hence, instead of defining man as an animal rationale, we should define him as an animal symbolicum. By so doing we can designate his specific difference and we can understand the new way open to man-the way to civilization.
— Cassirer
Man drinks without being thirsty and make love at any time; that is all distinguishes man from other animals.
— Beaumarchais
Man is the ape that wants to be a god.
— Walter Kauffman
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
— Oscar Wilde
Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;
Still by himself abused and disabused;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled;
The glory, jest and riddle of the world.
— Alexander Pope
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
— Plato
Love is something that makes two people think they are pretty when nobody else does. It also makes them sit close together on a bench even there’s plenty of room. It’s something which makes two people very quiet when you are around. And when they think you’re gone they talk about roses and dreams. And that’s all I know about love until I grow up!
— Charlie W Shedd
The first rule of life is to reveal nothing, to be exceptionally cautious in what you say, in whatever company you may find yourself. If you have a secret, you have only to whisper it to your dearest friend with the strictest injunction that it will go no further, and within half a day the story is all over town, and when you do make what would seem to be a perfectly sensible remark, you will find it reported in the most grotesque form, thus incurring no end of criticism to rebound upon you.
— Elizabeth Aston
Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command.
— Alan Watts
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
— Carl Jung
I use hate as a weapon to depend myself; had I been strong, I would never have needed that kind of weapon.
— Gibran
Man struggles to find life outside himself, unaware that life he is seeking is within him.
— Gibran
Every man loves two women; the one is the creation of his imagination and the other is not yet born.
— Gibran
From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.
— Socrates
He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare,
And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.
— Ali ibn-Abi-Talib
You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.
— Dale Carnegie
Justice consists not in being neutral between right and wrong, but in finding out the right and upholding it, wherever found, against the wrong.
— Theodore Roosevelt
Justice requires that to lawfully constituted Authority there be given that respect and obedience which is its due; that the laws which are made shall be in wise conformity with the common good; and that, as a matter of conscience all men shall render obedience to these laws.
— Pope Pius XI
I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
— Oscar Wilde
Perhaps the feelings that we experience when we are in love represent a normal state. Being in love shows a person who he should be.
— Anton Chekhov
He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still.
— Lao Tzu
Your old tutor did you a great disservice, Mr. Kynaston. He taught you how to speak, and swoon, and toss your head but he never taught you how to suffer like a woman, or love like a woman. He trapped a man in a woman’s form and left you there to die! I always hated you as Desdemona. You never fought! You just died, beautifully. No woman would die like that, no matter how much she loved him. A woman would fight!
— Maria (Stage Beauty)
Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.
— Blaise Pascal
Love is not a decision. It is a feeling. If we could decide who we loved, it would be much simpler, but much less magical.
— Trey Parker & Matt Stone
We mortals have many weaknesses; we feel too much, hurt too much or too soon we die, but we do have the chance of love.
— Sir Walter Raleigh
People will believe a big lie sooner than a little one, and if you repeat it frequently enough, people will sooner or later believe it.
— Walter Langer
You make your own fate. Now live or die with it.
— Anno
