Ambition is the source of all vices. It gives birth to hypocrisy, arouses envy, pushes to deception.
The virtue of most people declines as their wealth increases. Give a man what he needs – and he will ask for comfort. Provide him with comforts – and he will strive for luxury. Shower him with luxury – and he will begin to sigh for sophistication. Let him have the sophistication, and he will crave the insane. Give him anything he asks for – and he will complain that he was cheated and didn’t get what he wanted.
The time will come when human nature will come face to face with its destiny—what an explosion there will be then!
I wonder how many precious minutes are wasted in needlessly indulging our own weaknesses, in frivolous pastimes, in idle talk, in dubious and useless gaiety. Broadening your interests without deepening them means you’re just robbing yourself.
Action is needed. Passive contemplation is a dangerous state of mind. You should not waste your life in vain dreams.
People are always looking for shortcuts to happiness. There are no such shortcuts.
In life and work, far more important are not abilities, but character, not mind, but heart, not genius, but self-control, patience and discipline, subject to sober judgment.
Wisdom is the last gift of fate to the mature mind. The person who has experienced a lot begins to rely on time as his assistant. They say that time illuminates the past and comforts, but time also teaches. Time is the food on which experience is nourished, the soil on which wisdom grows. It can be both a friend and an enemy of youth. Time presides over old age as a comforter or an executioner, depending on what good or harm it has been used for, whether life has been lived to the full or not…
Life has almost flown by before we know what it is… There are so many beautiful and deeply moving things around us, and I am a little ashamed that I did not appreciate them properly. Yet, looking back, I can say for myself in four words: I lived a happy life.
