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The following words were inscribed on the bath of King Ching-Chang: "Renew yourself totally every day; do this again, and again, and, once more, again."
*Chinese wisdom

Do not allow yourself to be dominated by the frame of mind of the person who insults you, and do not go down the path along which he would like to lure you.
*Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Although Socrates considered stupidity to be incompatible with wisdom, he never considered ignorance to be stupidity. But not to know yourself and to pretend that you know things that you in fact don’t know — that he considered to be lunacy.
*Xenophon, Memorabilia

The way we see and perceive the external world is only meaningful for us. To say that this world is actually as we perceive it is like saying that human beings with a different view of the world from us cannot exist.
*Tolstoy

Once a sage was told that he was considered to be a bad man. He replied: “It’s a good thing they don’t know everything about me, otherwise they would have criticized me even more”
*Tolstoy

Any self-improvement is impossible if you live constantly in the bustle of the everyday world. But it is even less possible if you live in constant solitude. If you want to improve yourself, the very best approach is to develop and establish your view of things in solitude and then to apply it as you live in the everyday world.
*Tolstoy

🤔 My favorite couple: bustle and solitude!

Passion within someone is at first a spider’s web, and then a thick rope.
Passion appears at first as a stranger, then as a guest and, finally, as a homeowner.
*Talmud

It is true that wealth is acquired through hard work. Yet it is usually one person who does the work, and quite another who does the acquiring. And that's what clever people call "division of labour"!
*English saying

Doing good brings great happiness. The sense of happiness increases when you know that nobody knows what you have done.
*Tolstoy

One of the purest and most undoubted joys of life is to rest after hard work.

Work constantly, without considering it to be a misfortune, and never expect to be praised for it.

The more demanding the work, the greater the rest and the joy it brings. (Kant, CPrR)

Even the most outstanding of talents can be ruined by idleness. (Montaigne, Essays)

…Good heavens! Back to work to keep the momentum 🙄

Neither let mistakes and wrong directions— of which every man, in his studies and elsewhere, falls into many — discourage you. There is precious instruction to be got by finding that we are wrong.

* Carlyle, ‘Letter to a Young Man’, 13 March 1843

Reward me, reward me! said Sir George, gaily. You know the way.

Nay, but I am too much your friend, said Mercy.

Be less my friend, then, and more my darling.

[...] If it will be for your happiness, I will. And I must have time to learn two things -- whether you can be constant to a simple woman like me, and whether I can love again as tenderly as you deserve to be loved [...}

...And she threw her arms lovingly round his neck, and gazed on him adoringly. But his lion-like eyes avoided her dove-like eyes; and an involuntary shudder ran through him.

Take thy head out o’ the coow, said he, roughly, and answer straight. Is all our wooing to go for nought?

Wooing? You never said so much to me in all these years, as you have to-day.

Oh, ye knew my mind well enough. There’s a many of ways of showing the heart.

Speaking out is the best, I throw.

Why, what do I come here for twice a week, this two years past, if not for thee?

Ay, for me, and father’s ale.

Pity and admiration; where these meet, love is not far behind.

...She confessed a heap. And presently the soft but chill tones of Brother Leondard broke in with these freezing words: "My daughter, excuse me; but confession is one thing, gossip about ourselves is another."

This distinction was fine, but fatal. The next minute the fair penitent was in her carriage, her eyes filled with tears of mortification.

"The man is a spiritual machine", said said...

Mr. and Mrs. Gaunt lived happily together -- as times went. [...] For many years they did not furnish any exciting or even interesting matter to this narrator. And all the better for them: without these happy periods of dullness our lives would be hell, and our hearts eternally bubbling and boiling in a huge pot made hot with thorns...

'She is engaged to Gaunt, since last night; and she loves him.'
The double-faced jade! cried Peyton, with an oath.
The heartless coquette! groaned Neville.
Father Francis made excuses for her: Nay, nay, she is not the first of her sex that did not know her own mind all at once. Besides, we men are blind in matters of love: perhaps a woman would have read her from the first.

[…] After that, she did the wisest thing, perhaps, she had done all day. Went to bed.

George wore a bitter sneer at this. "Mistress Kate" said he, after a significant pause, "do you read Moliere"?
She bridled a little,& would not reply; she knew Moliere quite well enough not to want his wit leveled at her head.
"Do you admire the character of Celimene?"
No reply.
"You do not. How can you. She was too much your inferior. She never sent one of her lovers with a letter to the other to stop his flight...

[...] this blushing and averted cheek is one of those equivocal receptions that have puzzled many a sensible man. It is a sign of coy love; it is a sign of gentle aversion; our mode of interpreting it is simple and judicious; whichever it happens to be we go and take it for the other [...]

At last she recovered her breath,&bade him look at the picture.It was the portrait he had made of her when they were young together,& little thought to part so soon.He held it in his hands &looked at it,but could scarce see it.He had left it in fragments,but now it was whole

They cut it to pieces,Gerard;but see,Love mocked at their knives

I implore thee with my dying breath,let this picture hang ever in thine eye

On the road Denys found out this priest was a kind soul,so told him his trouble,& confessed his heart was pretty near broken. "The great use our stout hearts,& arms,& lives till we are worn out,& then fling us away like broken tools." He sighed deeply,& it cost Gerard a great struggle not to hug him then and there,and tell him. But he wanted to do it all like a story book.Who has not had this fancy once in his life?

For ever? he cried aloud,with sudden ardour.Christians live for ever,&love for ever,but they never part for ever.They part,as part the earth & sun,to meet more brightly in a little while.You & I part here for life.And what is our life?One line in the great story of the Church,whose son &daughter we are;one handful in the sand of time,one drop in the ocean of 'For ever.'Adieu—for the little moment called 'a life!'

What, are all these words really fast upon the paper? Is it verily certain they will not go as swiftly as they came? And you took me for a magician! 'Tis 'Augustine de civitate Dei.' My sons, you carry here the very wings of knowledge. Oh, never abuse this great craft! Print no ill books! They would fly abroad countless as locusts, and lay waste men's souls.

As is the race of leaves so is that of men.

[…] So sat the fabled sphynx: so sits a tigress.

Yet there crept a chill upon her now that the assassin was gone. And moody misgivings heaved within her, precursors of vain remorse. Gerard and Margaret were before their age.
This was your true mediaeval. Proud, amorous, vindictive, generous, foolish, cunning, impulsive, unprincipled: and ignorant as dirt.

Power is the curse of such a creature.

And so he dived in foul waters, seeking that sorry oyster-shell, Oblivion.

Hear you that? said the friar. Show me the whip that can whip the vanity out of man's heart! The young monkey; how knoweth he that stranger is a sinner more than he?

Father, said Gerard, surely this is not to our Lord's mind. He was so pitiful

Our Lord? said the friar, crossing himself. What has He to do with this? This was a custom in Rome six hundred years before He was born…

…the door opened,& a superb beauty entered the room,followed by two maids.It was the young princess of the house of Cesarini.She came in talking rather loudly & haughtily to her dependents,but at sight of Gerard lowered her voice to a very feminine tone,& said, Are you the writer, messer?

I am, Signora.

Tis well.

She then seated herself; Gerard and her maids remained standing.

What is your name, good youth?