"In failing circumstances no one can be relied on to keep their integrity."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on integrity
7 fans of this quote   

"Heroism feels and never reasons, and therefore is always right."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on heroes and heroism
3 fans of this quote   

"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on achievement
102 fans of this quote   

"A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on friends and friendship
15 fans of this quote   

"A true friend is somebody who can make us do what we can."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on friends and friendship
16 fans of this quote   

"We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected"

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on friends and friendship
5 fans of this quote   

"When it is dark enough, you can see the stars."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on difficulties
53 fans of this quote   

"In the long run, the pessimist may be proven right, but the optimist has a better time on the trip."

Readon, Daniel on pessimism
3 fans of this quote   

"Trust yourself, then you will know how to live."

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von on self-esteem
12 fans of this quote   

"Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves."

Cioran, E. M. on criticism   

"Where there is much light, the shadow is deep."

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von on contrast
5 fans of this quote   

"No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others."

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von on communication
5 fans of this quote   

"The people who are absent are the ideal; those who are present seem to be quite commonplace."

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von on absence
3 fans of this quote   

"No one should be rich except those who understand it."

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von on wealth   

"All truly wise thoughts have been thoughts already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience."

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von on thoughts and thinking   

"Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking."

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von on thoughts and thinking
3 fans of this quote   

"Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow."

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von on change
7 fans of this quote   

"If you must tell me your opinions, tell me what you believe in. I have plenty of doubts of my own."

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von on belief
4 fans of this quote   

"Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one's thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world."

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von on action
20 fans of this quote   

"If you do not the expect the unexpected you will not find it, for it is not to be reached by search or trail."

Heraclitus on expectation
4 fans of this quote   

"Immortal mortals, mortal immortals, one living the others death and dying the others life."

Heraclitus on immortality
3 fans of this quote   

"A sudden silence in the middle of a conversation suddenly brings us back to essentials: it reveals how dearly we must pay for the invention of speech."

Cioran, E. M. on conversation   

"The obsession with suicide is characteristic of the man who can neither live nor die, and whose attention never swerves from this double impossibility."

Cioran, E. M. on suicide
7 fans of this quote   

"It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late."

Cioran, E. M. on suicide
3 fans of this quote   

"Speech and silence. We feel safer with a madman who talks than with one who cannot open his mouth."

Cioran, E. M. on speech   

"When you have understood that nothing is, that things do not even deserve the status of appearances, you no longer need to be saved, you are saved, and miserable forever."

Cioran, E. M. on salvation
3 fans of this quote   

"Only one endowed with restless vitality is susceptible to pessimism. You become a pessimist --a demonic, elemental, bestial pessimist --only when life has been defeated many times in its fight against depression."

Cioran, E. M. on pessimism
4 fans of this quote   

"The fanatic is incorruptible: if he kills for an idea, he can just as well get himself killed for one; in either case, tyrant or martyr, he is a monster."

Cioran, E. M. on fanatics and fanaticism
4 fans of this quote   

"There is no means of proving it is preferable to be than not to be."

Cioran, E. M. on existence
3 fans of this quote   

"You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters are continually flowing on."

Heraclitus on change
10 fans of this quote   

"Self-love exaggerates our faults as well as our virtues."

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von on love
4 fans of this quote   

"People may live as much retired from the world as they like, but sooner or later they find themselves debtor or creditor to some one."

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von on retirement   

"Do not give in too much to feelings. A overly sensitive heart is an unhappy possession on this shaky earth."

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von on feelings
15 fans of this quote   

"Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about themselves and their destiny. They learn what to do and what to avoid."

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von on destiny
9 fans of this quote   

"A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants."

Schopenhauer, Arthur on conflict   

"Will power is to the mind like a strong blind man who carries on his shoulders a lame man who can see."

Schopenhauer, Arthur on power
4 fans of this quote   

"Suicide may also be regarded as an experiment -- a question which man puts to Nature, trying to force her to answer. The question is this: What change will death produce in a man's existence and in his insight into the nature of things? It is a clumsy experiment to make; for it involves the destruction of the very consciousness which puts the question and awaits the answer."

Schopenhauer, Arthur on suicide
4 fans of this quote   

"Books are like a mirror. If an ass looks in, you can't expect an angel to look out."

Schopenhauer, Arthur on books - reading
3 fans of this quote   

"Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people."

Schopenhauer, Arthur on relationship
11 fans of this quote   

"The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him."

Schopenhauer, Arthur on intelligence and intellectuals