Echoes

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.

Love children especially, for they too are sinless like the angels; they live to soften and purify our hearts and as it were to guide us.

Sincerity is the end and beginning of things; without sincerity there would be nothing. On this account, the superior man regards the attainment of sincerity as the most excellent thing.

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.

If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.

Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains to bring it to light.

Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.

Virtue is serious business; everything else is farce.

The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child.

The most any one can do is to confess as candidly as he can the grounds for the faith that is in him, and leave his example to work on others as it may.

Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.

I will have nought to do with a man who can blow hot and cold with the same breath.

Not-knowing is true knowledge. Presuming to know is a disease.

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

Friendship and domestic happiness are continually praised; yet how little is there of either in the world, because it requires more cultivation of mind to keep awake affection, even in our own hearts, than the common run of people suppose. Besides, few like to be seen as they really are; and a degree of simplicity, and of undisguised confidence, which, to uninterested observers, would almost border on weakness, is the charm, nay the essence of love or friendship, all the bewitching graces of childhood again appearing.

All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.

The young have exalted notions, because they have not been humbled by life or learned its necessary limitations; moreover, their hopeful disposition makes them think themselves equal to great things—and that means having exalted notions. They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones: Their lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning.... All their mistakes are due to excess and vehemence and their neglect of the maxim of Chilon. They overdo everything; they love too much, hate too much, and the same with everything else. And they think they know everything, and confidently affirm it, and this is the cause of their excess in everything.

The finest manners in the world are awkwardness and fatuity, when contrasted with a finer intelligence.

Optimism is true moral courage.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

True glory takes root and spreads; all pretenses quickly fall like flowers, and nothing feigned can last.

Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.