I follow nature as the surest guide, and resign myself with implicit obedience to her sacred ordinances.

Politicians are not born; they are excreted.

Poor is the nation that has no heroes, but poorer still is the nation that having heroes, fails to remember and honor them.

It is the peculiar quality of a fool to perceive the faults of others and to forget his own.

Read at every wait; read at all hours; read within leisure; read in times of labor; read as one goes in; read as one goest out. The task of the educated mind is simply put: read to lead.

We learn nothing from history except that we learn nothing from history.

It is not enough to acquire wisdom, it is necessary to employ it.

Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.

Nothing is more unreliable than the populace, nothing more obscure than human intentions, nothing more deceptive than the whole electoral system.

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves,  even when we risk disappointing others.

The problem with parents is that they're adults.

Anger is one way to respond to fear. I say one way because responses are categorically multiple.

Let us read the lives of the saints; let us consider the penances which they performed, and blush to be so effeminate and so fearful of mortifying our flesh.

Lies always come first, dragging fools along by their irreparable vulgarity. Truth always lags last, limping along on the arm of time.

A bore finds it easy to start talking, and even easier to get others to stop listening.

We must do without hope.

Fear is essential for courage.

Never back down from a real challenge. They give the best lessons in life.

There is therefore a tremendous mystery in the fact that God may be united with man and the man with God.