“He doesn’t appear much, does he—one frightened old fat man too weak to support his own flesh without the help of suspensors.”

“But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.”

“We need a backbone, not a wishbone.” 

“He [Vronsky] himself felt that, except that crazy fellow married to Kitty Shcherbatsky, who, quite irrelevantly had with rabid virulence told him a lot of pointless nonsense, every nobleman whose acquaintance he had made had become his partisan.”

“how you get up in the morning will play a big part in how high you go up in life.”

“Music. A meaningless acceleration in the rhythm of celestial experience.”

“If history teaches anything, it teaches that self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly.”

“You see, Count, I have the Emperor’s prison planet, Salusa Secundus, to inspire me.”

“Is the consideration of a little dirty pelf, to individuals, to be placed in competition with the essential rights & liberties of the present generation, & of millions yet unborn? shall a few designing men for their own aggrandizement, and to gratify their own avarice, overset the goodly fabric we have been rearing at the expence of so much time, blood, & treasure? and shall we at last become the victems of our own abominable lust of gain? Forbid it heaven! forbid it all, & every state in the union! by enacting & enforcing, efficatious laws for checking the growth of these monstrous evils, & restoring matters in some degree to the pristine state they were in at the commencement of the War. Our cause is noble. It is the cause of Mankind! and the danger to it springs from ourselves—Shall we slumber & sleep then while we should be punishing those miscreants who have brought these troubles upon us, & who are aiming to continue us in them? While we should be striving to fill our Battalions—and devising ways and means to appreciate the currency—On the credit of which every thing depends? I hope not—let vigorous measures be adopted—not to limit the price of articles—for this I conceive is inconsistent with the very nature of things, & impracticable in itself—but to punish speculators—forestallers—& extortioners—and above all—to sink the money by heavy Taxes—To promote public & private Œconomy—encourage Manufactures &ca—Measures of this sort gone heartily into by the several states will strike at once at the root of all our misfortunes, & give the coup-de-grace to British hope of subjugating this great Continent, either by their Arms or their Arts—The first as I have before observed they acknowledge is unequal to the task—the latter I am sure will be so if we are not lost to every thing that is good & virtuous.”

“If you want to reach your potential and become the person you were created to be, you must do much more than just experience life and hope that you learn what you need along the way. You must go out of your way to seize growth opportunities as if your future depended on it.”

“If the cause is advanced, indifferent is it to me where or in what quarter it happens.”

“Yet partial obedience is disobedience.”

“You cannot grow unless you are willing to change. And you will not change unless you change something you do every day.”

“It’s only when we forget ourselves that we do the things that deserve to be remembered.” 

“In contrast, the Bible says, “A man’s wisdom gives him patience; it is to his glory to overlook an offense.”15 Patience comes from wisdom, and wisdom comes from hearing the perspective of others. Listening says, “I value your opinion, I care about our relationship, and you matter to me.” The cliché is true: People don’t care what we know until they know we care.”