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Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.
If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man.
It is not a man’s duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support.
The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.
I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.
If I were to discover that a certain kind of stone by the pond-shore was affected, say partially disintegrated, buy a particular natural sound, as of a bird or insect, I see that one could not be completely described without describing other. I am that rock by the pond side.
Ambition becomes displeasing once it is satisfied; there is a reaction. Our spirit endlessly aims towards some object, then falls back on itself, having nothing else on which to rest, and having reached the summit, it longs to descend.
But now you are awake; it is but a dream you had! For horror’s prey in darkness of the night is but our reason’s sport in morning light.
Freedom has a thousand charms to show, that slaves, however contented, never know.
Belief consists in accepting the affirmation of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.
Give yourself more diligently to reflection; come to know yourself.
What a brave privilege it is to be free from all contentions, from all envying or being envied, from receiving or paying all kinds of ceremonies!
Nothing is so easy as to deceive one’s self, for what we wish to believe, we readily believe, but such expectations are often inconsistent with the real state of things.
My third maxim was to endeavor always to conquer myself rather than fortune, and change my desires rather than the order of the world… and thus render me contented.
Good sense and good-nature are never separated, though the ignorant world has thought otherwise. Good nature, by which I mean beneficence and candor, is the product of right reason.
Scholar: “Loving master, I can no more endure anything should divert me, how shall I find the nearest way to (the Divine)?”
Master: “Where the way is hardest there walk thou, and take up what the world rejecteth; and what the world doth, that do not thou. Walk contrary to the world in all things. And then thou comest the nearest way to it.”
If you seek Truth, you will not seek to gain a victory by every possible means; and when you have found the Truth, you need not fear being defeated.
The question at stake is no common one. It is, “Are we in our right sense or are we not?”
He truly engages in battle who endeavours to surmount all the difficulties and errors which prevent him from reaching the knowledge of truth.
I am as free as Nature first made man, ere the base laws of servitude began.
