"No one is free who has not obtained the empire of himself. No man is free who cannot command himself."
— Pythagoras

""To hell with reality! I want to die in music, not in reason or in prose. People don't deserve the restraint we show by not going into delirium in front of them. To hell with them!""
— Louis-Ferdinand Céline

"The worst part is wondering how you’ll find the strength tomorrow
to go on doing what you did today and have been doing for much
too long, where you’ll find the strength for all that stupid running around, those projects that come to nothing, those attempts to escape from crushing necessity, which always founder and serve only to convince you one more time that destiny is implacable, that every night will find you down and out, crushed by the dread of more and more sordid and insecure tomorrows. And maybe it’s treacherous old age coming on, threatening the worst. Not much music left inside us for life to dance to. Our youth has gone to the ends of the earth to die in the silence of the truth. And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn’t enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I’ve never been able to kill myself."
— Louis-Ferdinand Céline

"The bond between husband and wife is a strong one. Suppose the man had hunted her out and brought her back. The memory of her acts would still be there, and inevitably, sooner or later, it would be cause for rancor. When there are crises, incidents, a woman should try to overlook them, for better or for worse, and make the bond into something durable. The wounds will remain, with the woman and with the man, when there are crises such as I have described. It is very foolish for a woman to let a little dalliance upset her so much that she shows her resentment openly. He has his adventures--but if he has fond memories of their early days together, his and hers, she may be sure that she matters. A commotion means the end of everything. She should be quiet and generous, and when something comes up that quite properly arouses her resentment she should make it known by delicate hints. The man will feel guilty and with tactful guidance he will mend his ways. Too much lenience can make a woman seem charmingly docile and trusting, but it can also make her seem somewhat wanting in substance. We have had instances enough of boats abandoned to the winds and waves.
It may be difficult when someone you are especially fond of, someone beautiful and charming, has been guilty of an indiscretion, but magnanimity produces wonders. They may not always work, but generosity and reasonableness and patience do on the whole seem best."
— Murasaki Shikibu (The Tale of Genji)

"Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not"
— Protagoras

"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."
— Socrates

"The unexamined life is not worth living."
— Socrates

"I'm sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect."
— J.D. Salinger

"I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody."
— J.D. Salinger

"The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that is wants to live humbly for one.

Quoted in J.D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" "
— Wilhelm Stekel

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."
— Winston S. Churchill

"He who stands for nothing will fall for anything."
— Alexander Hamilton

"At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself,
you will succumb in every battle"
— Sun Tzu (The Art of War, Special Edition)

"Water shapes its course according to the nature of the ground
over which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation
to the foe whom he is facing."
— Sun Tzu

"All warfare is based on deception."
— Sun Tzu

"There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened. "
— C.S. Lewis (The Great Divorce)

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life."
— Confucius

"The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort."
— Confucius

"Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance."
— Confucius

"Give a bowl of rice to a man and you will feed him for a day. Teach him how to grow his own rice and you will save his life."
— Confucius

"Attack the evil that is within yourself, rather than attacking the evil that is in others."
— Confucius

"What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others."
— Confucius

"Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?"
— William Blake

"Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door."
— William Blake (Songs of Innocence And of Experience)

"You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"The mind is its own place, and in itself
can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven."
— John Milton (Paradise Lost)

"As good almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye."
— John Milton (Areopagitica)

"Farewell Hope, and with Hope farewell Fear"
— John Milton

"What in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support,
That to the height of this great argument
I may assert eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men. 1
Paradise Lost. Book i. Line 22."
— John Milton

"He who thinks we are to pitch our tent here, and have attained the utmost prospect of reformation that the mortal glass wherein we contemplate can show us, till we come to beatific vision, that man by this very opinion declares that he is yet far short of truth."
— John Milton