Of all the ways of defining man, the worst is the one which makes him out to be a rational animal.
—Anatole France (French Novelist)
So long as I am acting from duty and conviction, I am indifferent to taunts and jeers. I think they will probably do me more good than harm.
—Winston Churchill (British Head of State)
The tragedy of human history is decreasing happiness in the midst of increasing comforts.
—Swami Chinmayananda (Indian Hindu Teacher)
Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own. Above all be pure.
—Virginia Woolf (English Novelist)
A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.
—Jean de La Fontaine (French Poet)
When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher)
We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified.
—Aesop (Greek Fabulist)
The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary, it makes them for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind? Failure makes people cruel and bitter.
—W. Somerset Maugham (French Playwright)
The great danger of conversion in all ages has been that when the religion of the high mind is offered to the lower mind, the lower mind, feeling its fascination without understanding it, and being incapable of rising to it, drags it down to its level by degrading it.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)
If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)