Misguided good men are more dangerous than honest bad men. It is because they are seen as good that, in and by good conscience, the mob will always, stubbornly back them without question.

I believe that love--not imitation--is the sincerest form of flattery. Your imitator thinks that you can be duplicated your lover knows you can't.

I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists. I wish to persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings are only the objects of pity, and that kind of love which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt.

Assuming what people want is about as controlled as using fireworks to start a fire.

aphorism 129:I would have every thought stoop and touch the Earth but that I already know the impossibility of the effort. A thought seems to have a life of its own and would rather leave itself open to flattering interpretations.

When you're appeasing too much, you might be egotistically over-estimating everyone's need for your approval.