The course of true love never did run smooth.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)
People who make no mistakes lack boldness and the spirit of adventure. They are the brakes on the wheels of progress.
—Dale Turner (American Congregational Priest)
Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.
—Anton Chekhov (Russian Short Story Writer)
Happy people are ignoramuses and glory is nothing else but success, and to achieve it one only has to be cunning.
—Mikhail Lermontov (Russian Novelist, Poet)
All achievement, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea!
—Napoleon Hill (American Author)
Heaven and God are best discerned through tears; scarcely perhaps are discerned at all without them. The constant association of prayer with the hour of bereavement and the scenes of death suffice to show this.
—James Martineau (English Unitarian Theologian)
The wisdom of one generation will be the folly of the next, and yet we persist in making preceding generations dictate to the succeeding ones.
—Joseph Priestley (English Clergyman, Scientist)
The fool thinks himself alone and commits sin. But I know of no lonely place at all… . Of a bad action my “Self” is a witness far more sharp-sighted than any other person.
—The Jataka Tales (Genre of Buddhist Literature)
Everything is evil. I mean, everything that is, is wicked; every existing thing is an evil; everything exists for a wicked end. Existence is a wickedness and is ordained for wickedness. Evil is the end, the final purpose, of the universe…The only good is nonbeing; the only really good thing is the thing that is not, things that are not things; all things are bad.
—Giacomo Leopardi (Italian Poet)
Unrest of the spirit is a mark of life; one problem after another presents itself and in the solving of them we can find our greatest pleasure.
—Karl Menninger (American Psychiatrist)
Truth is the breath of life to human society. It is the food of the immortal spirit. Yet a single word of it may kill a man as suddenly as a drop of prussic acid.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician, Essayist)
Care not for time and success. Act out thy part, whether it be to fail or to prosper.
—Sri Aurobindo (Indian Mystic, Philosopher, Poet)