If there is anything good about nobility it is that it enforces the necessity of avoiding degeneracy

Nothing is miserable unless you think it so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it.

Music is so naturally united with us that we cannot be free from it - even if we so desired.

If there is a God, whence proceed so many evils? If there is no God, whence cometh any good?

He who is virtuous is wise; and he who is wise is good; and he who is good is happy.

Who would give a law to lovers? Love is unto itself a higher law.

Inconsistency is my very essence; it is the game I never cease to play as I turn my wheel in its ever changing circle, filled with joy as I bring the top to the bottom and the bottom to the top

Nothing is miserable unless you think it so.

One's virtue is all that one truly has, because it is not imperiled by the vicissitudes of fortune.

In every kind of adversity, the bitterest part of a man's affliction is to remember that he once was happy.

He who has calmly reconciled his life to fate, and set proud death beneath his feet, can look fortune in the face, unbending both to good and bad; his countenance unconquered.

Buddhism has a term for the happiness we feel at someone else’s success or good fortune. Sympathetic joy, as it is known, invites us to celebrate for others.

Red lips are not so red as the stained stones kissed by the English dead.

The belief that rational and quantifiable disciplines such as science can be used to perfect human society is no less absurd than a belief in magic, angels, and divine intervention.

You don't need a city charter to know that education is the foundation of any community.

If you care too much about Singapore, first it'll break your spirit, and finally it will break your heart.

Democracy is not the end product, but the means to the end, which is the enjoyment of human rights by all.

...while a sane world would not employ 5-foot-tall grandmothers as law enforcement officers, a sane world would also not give full body-cavity searches to 5-foot-tall grandmothers at airports.

The intellectual attainments of a man who thinks for himself resemble a fine painting, where the light and shade are correct, the tone sustained, the colour perfectly hamonized; it is true to life.

In my photographs it is apparent that there was no posing at the moment I released the shutter.

Why is it when we have 10 million people in this country who say 'No', we still have a president who says 'Yes.' In a democracy, something's wrong here.