“What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness.

“Never make your most important decisions when you are in your worst mood

“It's like scarlet fever: one has to get it over." "Then one should invent a way of inoculating love, like vaccination.”

“Reward only finished work: It’s good to praise effort, but you should never reward it.

“Your calling isn’t something that somebody can tell you about. It’s what you feel. It is the thing that gives you juice. The thing that you are supposed to do. And nobody can tell you what that is. You know it inside yourself.”

“The worldly man treats certain people kindly because he 'likes' them: the Christian, trying to treat every one kindly, finds him liking more and more people as he goes on - including people he could not even have imagined himself liking at the beginning.”

“She danced the dance so well, so well indeed, so perfectly, that Anisya Fyodorovna, who handed her at once the kerchief she needed in the dance, had tears in her eyes, though she laughed as she watched that slender and graceful little countess, reared in silk and velvet, belonging to another world than hers, who was yet able to understand all that was in Anisya and her father and her mother and her aunt and every Russian soul.”

“Whenever you are fed up with life, start writing: ink is the great cure for all human ills, as I have found out long ago.”

“Lead from the front — but don t leave your base behind.”

“Goals give life substance. - To strive actively to achieve some goal gives your life meaning and substance.”

“grievance into a succinct and pithy phrase, while mobilizing the people to combat it. Our slogan” 

“Has God designated any one person here on earth to speak with final authority about Him? No—the one Man who could do that lived two thousand years ago, and we crucified Him!”

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.”

“System to all things is the soul of business. To execute properly and act maturely is the way to conduct it to your advantage.”

“Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to it, and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead. I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.”