It is only the enlightened ruler and the wise general who will use the highest intelligence of the army for the purposes of spying, and thereby they achieve great results.
—Sun Tzu
In our age the greatest and most harmful crimes aren’t those that are committed occasionally, but those that are committed every day without being recognized as crimes.
—Leo Tolstoy
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.
—Fyodor Dostoevsky
To be even minded is the greatest virtue.
—Heraclitus
The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.
—Henry David Thoreau
The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.
—Michelangelo
They tell us that Suicide is the greatest piece of Cowardice… That Suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in this world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
What wisdom can you find greater than kindness.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The proud person always wants to do the right thing, the great thing. But because he wants to do it in his own strength, he is fighting not with man, but with God.
—Søren Kierkegaard
The self-assured believer is a greater sinner in the eyes of God than the troubled disbeliever.
—Søren Kierkegaard
The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss – an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. – is sure to be noticed.
—Søren Kierkegaard
In my great melancholy, I loved life, for I love my melancholy.
—Søren Kierkegaard
I’m a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
—Thomas Jefferson
“Let us believe great things from the work of Christ by his Spirit in the midst of his people’s hearts, and we shall not be disappointed.”
To talk well and eloquently is a very great art, but that an equally great one is to know the right moment to stop.
—Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Nothing great in the world was accomplished without passion.
—Georg Hegel
Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.
—Thomas Edison
My meaning simply is, that whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well; that whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to completely; that in great aims and in small, I have always been thoroughly in earnest.
—Charles Dickens
The demand to be loved is the greatest of all arrogant presumptions.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Countless are, as the sand in the sea, the deep desires of men, and none resembles the other, and all of them, whether shameful, or great, in the beginning are obedient, but later become terrible masters over him.
—Nikolai Gogol
I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict.
—Plato
Better a little which is well done, than a great deal imperfectly.
—Plato
People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense.
—Thomas Edison
The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
It has been a great comfort to me to realize anew that it is God and only God we need.
—Amy Carmichael
I have learned to be a friend to myself Great improvement this indeed Such a one can never be said to be alone for know that he who is a friend to himself is a friend to all mankind.
—Seneca
If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.
—Charles Darwin
Many persons are misled by the favourable opinions entertained of them by others; many, it is to be feared, mistake a hot zeal for orthodoxy, for a cordial acceptance of the great truths of the gospel.
—William Wilberforce