wisdom

Adding to my emotional dizziness on Sunday, I spoke with my sister, who kept noting how amazing Michael is, and what a brave and selfless man he is for having helped as he did.

Love and hate when stretched to their extremes blind reasoning.

He learned...never to show his anger or hatred against a stronger adversary, for fear of being crushed.

...There is no greater dividing force in this world than self-interest...

A nationalist will blindly follow his country to his death out of love for it. A patriot will stand up for and even against his country to his death out of love for it.

Faith is focus.

But I stayed up thinking about how I've been lying to him, no less than I lie to myself in my pre-sleep ritual. And I lied to him again just as we were growing more intimate than ever and he asked me about my scar.

Maisie bit her lip. She had learned that sometimes it was best to let words die of their own accord, rather than fight them.

The purpose of life is to nurture joy, which involves those aspects of humanity that enrich the soul.

I went to interview a man with a high reputation for wisdom, because I felt that here if anywhere I should succeed in disproving the oracle and pointing out to my divine authority 'You said that I was the wisest of men, but here is a man who is wiser than I am.' Well, I gave a thorough examination to this person... and in conversation with him I formed the impression that although in many people's opinion, and especially in his own, he appeared to be wise, in fact he was not. Then when I began to try to show him that he only thought he was wise and was not really so, my efforts were resented both by him and by many of the other people present. However, I reflected as I walked away: 'Well, I am certainly wiser than this man. It is only too likely that neither of us has any knowledge to boast of; but he thinks that he knows something which he does not know, whereas I am quite conscious of my ignorance. At any rate it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think that I know what I do not know... [A]s I pursued my investigation at the god's command,... my honest impression was... that the people with the greatest reputations were almost entirely deficient, while others who were supposed to be their inferiors were much better qualified in practical intelligence.

When you are wise, peace shall follow.

You will never be satisfied with anything less than the highest you can attain.

It is a sad truth that those who crave and seek power, invariably abuse that power once they obtain it.

a person who tries to use reasoning to explain faith gets lost in the wilderness of incomprehension.

Only a fool would find happiness from an achievement that is detrimental to those he loves.

Motivation gets you started, and inspiration keeps you going.

Mom often said to me, "I know if you look good, you get special treatment." And then she went a step further: "I don't care what the world says or does. You have to remember that every person is valuable.

He clearly suffers from some past traumas too, so hopefully he'll understand why I was untruthful to him about mine.