Echoes

I would prefer inarticulate wisdom to loquacious foolishness.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

I don't want to be interesting. I want to be good.

Moral excellence is an ornament for personal beauty; righteous conduct, for high birth; success, for learning; and proper spending, for wealth.

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

Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.

Virtue is serious business; everything else is farce.

Be courteous to all, but intimate with few.

Ten thousand do not turn the scale against a single man of worth.

Our sadness is not sad, but our cheap joys.

Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.

Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.

What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.

Character is higher than intellect...A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think.

To account nothing of one’s self, and to think always kindly and highly of others, this is great and perfect wisdom.

If you act externally with men in conformity with your rank, you should recognize, by a more secret but truer thought, that you have nothing naturally superior to them.

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

That is not riches, which may be lost; virtue is our true good and the true reward of its possessor. That cannot be lost; that never deserts us, but when life leaves us. As to property and external riches, hold them with trembling; they often leave their possessor in contempt, and mocked at for having lost them.

A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.

Cherish that which is within you, and shut off that which is without; for much knowledge is a curse.

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

The gentleman understands what is moral. The small man understands what is profitable.

If you wish to have leisure for your mind, either be a poor man, or resemble a poor man. Study cannot be helpful unless you take pains to live simply; and living simply is voluntary poverty.

The five colors blind the eye. The five tones deafen the ear. The five flavors dull the taste. Racing and hunting madden the mind. Precious things lead one astray. Therefore the sage is guided by what he feels and not by what he sees. He lets go of that and chooses this.

The superior man loves his soul; the inferior man loves his property.