Echoes

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed.

The authority of a king is purely physical, and it controls the actions of the subject without subduing his private will; but the majority possesses a power which is physical and moral at the same time; it acts upon the will as well as upon the actions of men, and it represses not only all contest, but all controversy.

He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties. He must use observation to see, reasoning and judgment to foresee, activity to gather materials for decision, discrimination to decide, and when he has decided, firmness and self-control to hold to his deliberate decision.

Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions. (1).

A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.

A thought comes when 'it' wishes, and not when 'I' wish.

Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto. (I am a man; nothing human is alien to me.)

Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

I assert once again as a truth to which history as a whole bears witness that men may second their fortune, but cannot oppose it; that they may weave its warp, but cannot break it. Yet they should never give up, because there is always hope, though they know not the end and more towards it along roads which cross one another and as yet are unexplored; and since there is hope, they should not despair, no matter what fortune brings or in what travail they find themselves.

No man is free who is not master of himself.

No man is free who is not master of himself.

The best way to predict your future is to create it.

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.

I think that yesterday was a crisis in my life. I finished the first part of Renouvier's second Essais and see no reason why his definition of free will—"the sustaining of a thought because I choose to when I might have other thoughts"—need be the definition of an illusion. At any rate, I will assume for the present—until next year—that it is no illusion. My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.

I found that a strict and regular life is the true way to conquer nature, and that the proverb which says that nature is so powerful is in part false.

No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.

We always strive for what is forbidden, and desire what is denied.

Perseverance and spirit have done wonders in all ages.

The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases.

He whose intellect overcomes his desire is higher than the angels; he whose desire overcomes his intellect is less than an animal.

Men at some time are masters of their fates:The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,But in ourselves, that we are underlings.