Echoes

My enemy said to me, "Love your enemy." And I obeyed him and loved myself.

If you want to be respected by others the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.

Withdraw into yourself as much as you can. Associate with those who will make a better man of you. Welcome those whom you yourself can improve.

Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up.

The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness.

Of all the means which wisdom acquires to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is friendship.

It is in deep solitude that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brothers. The more solitary I am, the more affection I have for them.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

He who cannot find himself the retreat of his own soul, let him appeal to solitude — if he can even bear himself.

The primary indication, to my thinking, of a well-ordered mind is a man's ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company.

It would be better for me that the whole world should disagree with me than that I, being one, should be out of harmony with myself.

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.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness, and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love.

When you are content to be simply yourself, everybody will respect you.

Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together.

It would be better for me... that multitudes of men should disagree with me rather than that I, being one, should be out of harmony with myself.

Make an island of yourself, make yourself your refuge; there is no other refuge. Make truth your island, make truth your refuge; there is no other refuge.

It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.

You should rather please yourself than the people; take thought for the quality, not the number, of judgements made about you.

It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinions than our own.

Though the whole world should praise him, he would not be stimulated to greater endeavour, and though the whole world should condemn him, he would not be depressed. So fixed was he in the difference between the internal judgement of himself and the external judgement of others.

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

And you? When will you begin that long journey into yourself?

No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.

Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.