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| A fop is the mercer’s friend, the tailor’s fool, and his own foe. | 1 |
| Airs of importance are the credentials of impotence. | 2 |
| Call him wise whose actions, words, and steps are all a clear Because to a clear Why. | 3 |
| Calmness of will is a sign of grandeur. The vulgar, far from hiding their will, blab their wishes, A single spark of occasion discharges the child of passions into a thousand crackers of desire. | 4 |
| Conscience is wiser than science. | 5 |
| Der Mensch ist frei wie der Vogel im Käfig; er kann sich innerhalb gewisser Grenzen bewegen—Man is free as the bird in the cage: he has powers of motion within certain limits. | 6 |
| Each heart is a world. You find all within yourself that you find without. The world that surrounds you is the magic glass of the world within you. | 7 |
| Each particle of matter is an immensity, each leaf a world, each insect an inexplicable compendium. | 8 |
| Evasions are the common subterfuge of the hard-hearted, the false, and impotent, when called upon to assist. | 9 |
| Faces are as legible as books, only they are read in much less time, and are much less likely to deceive us. | 10 |
| Genius always gives its best at first, prudence at last. | 11 |
| God manifests Himself to men in all wise, good, humble, generous, great, and magnanimous souls. | 12 |
| Habit is too arbitrary a master for my liking. | 13 |
| He alone has energy that cannot be deprived of it. | 14 |
| He knows not how to speak who cannot be silent, still less how to act with vigour and decision. | 15 |
| He knows very little of mankind who expects, by facts or reasoning, to convince a determined party-man. | 16 |
| He only is an acute observer who can observe minutely without being observed. | 17 |
| He submits himself to be seen through a microscope who suffers himself to be caught in a fit of passion. | 18 |
| He that can conceal his joys is greater than he who can hide his griefs. | 19 |
| He who can at all times sacrifice pleasure to duty approaches sublimity. | 20 |
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| He who can conceal his joys is greater than he who can conceal his griefs. | 21 |
| He who partakes in another’s joys is more humane than he who partakes in his griefs. | 22 |
| He who reforms himself has done more towards reforming the public than a crowd of noisy impotent patriots. | 23 |
| Indolence is the paralysis of the soul. | 24 |
| Intuition is the clear conception of the whole at once. It seldom belongs to man to say without presumption, “I came, I saw, I conquered.” | 25 |
| Lass die schwerste Pflicht dir die allerheiligste Pflicht sein—Let the most arduous duty be the most sacred of all to thee. | 26 |
| Learn the value of a man’s words and expressions, and you know him. Each man has a measure of his own for everything; this he offers you inadvertently in his words. He who has a superlative for everything wants a measure for the great or small. | 27 |
| Lerne vom Schlimmsten Gutes, und Schlimmes nicht vom Besten—Learn good from the worst, and not bad from the best. | 28 |
| Love sees what no eye sees; hears what no ear hears; and what never rose in the heart of man love prepares for its object. | 29 |
| Man is free as the bird is in its cage: he can move about within certain limits. | 30 |
| Mistrust the man who finds everything good, and the man who finds everything evil, and still more the man who is indifferent to everything. | 31 |
| Obstinacy is the strength of the weak. | 32 |
| Speak no evil of a man if you know it not of him for certain, and if you do know it, then ask yourself, “Why do I tell it?” | 33 |
| The craftiest wiles are too short and ragged a cloak to cover a bad heart. | 34 |
| The cruelty of the affectionate is more dreadful than that of the hardy. | 35 |
| The generous, who is always just, and the just who is always generous, may, unannounced, approach the throne of Heaven. | 36 |
| The great rule of moral conduct is, next to God, to respect time. | 37 |
| The jealous is possessed by a “fine mad devil” and a dull spirit at once. | 38 |
| The more honesty a man has, the less he affects the air of a saint. | 39 |
| The world that surrounds you is the magic glass of the world within you. To know yourself you have only to set down a true statement of those that ever loved or hated you. | 40 |
| There are but three classes of men—the retrograde, the stationary, and the progressive. | 41 |
| There is no mortal truly wise and restless at once; wisdom is the repose of minds. | 42 |
| Thinkers are scarce as gold; but he whose thoughts embrace all his subject, pursues it uninterruptedly and fearless of consequences, is a diamond of enormous size. | 43 |
| Too much gravity argues a shallow mind. | 44 |
| Trust him little who praises all, him less who censures all, and him least who is indifferent about all. | 45 |
| Weaknesses, so called, are neither more nor less than vice in disguise. | 46 |
| What is the elevation of the soul? A prompt, delicate, certain feeling for all that is beautiful, all that is grand; a quick resolution to do the greatest good by the smallest means; a great benevolence joined to a great strength and great humility. | 47 |
| Who forces himself on others is to himself a load. Impetuous curiosity is empty and inconstant. Prying intrusion may be suspected of whatever is little. | 48 |
| Who gives a trifle meanly is meaner than the trifle. | 49 |
| Who has a daring eye tells downright truths and downright lies. | 50 |
| Who, in the midst of just provocation to anger, instantly finds the fit word which settles all around him in silence, is more than wise or just; he is, were he a beggar, of more than royal blood—he is of celestial descent. | 51 |
| You are not very good if you are not better than your best friends imagine you to be. | 52 |
| You may depend upon it that he is a good man whose intimate friends are all good. | 53 |
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