England would be better off without Canada; it keeps her in a prepared state for war at a great expense and constant irritation.
A cowardly act! What do I care about that? You may be sure that I should never fear to commit one if it were to my advantage.
Even when I am gone, I shall remain in people's minds the star of their rights, my name will be the war cry of their efforts, the motto of their hopes.
Everything is born from change. ...there is nothing nature loves more that to alter what exists and make new things like it. All that exists is the seed of what will emerge from it. You think the only seeds are the one that make plants and children? Go deeper.
Your time has a limit set to it. Use it, then, to advance your enlightenment; or it will be gone, and never in your power again.
I pay attention only to what people do or say. I never pay attention to what they think.
Death - a stopping of impressions through the senses, and of the pulling of the cords of motion, and of the ways of thought, and of service to the flesh.
If it had not been for the English I should have been emperor of the East, but wherever there is water to float a ship we are sure to find them in our way.
The division of labor, which has brought such perfection in mechanical industries, is altogether fatal when applied to productions of the mind. All work of the mind is superior inproportion as the mind that produces it is universal.
Remind oneself continually of one of those who practiced virtue in days gone by.
Large legislative bodies resolve themselves into coteries, and coteries into jealousies.
In the eyes of empire builders men are not men but instruments.
Why dost thou not pray... to give thee the faculty of not fearing any of the things which thou fearest, or of not desiring any of the things which thou desirest, or not being pained at anything, rather than pray that any of these things should not happen or happen?
When thou art offended at any man's fault, forthwith turn to thyself and reflect in what manner thou doest error thyself. For by attending to this thou wilt quickly forget thy anger, if this consideration is also added, that the man is compelled; for what else could he do? or, if thou art able, take away from him the compulsion.
There are two merits that glorify a person: being courageous for a man and being virtuous for a woman. Besides these two, there is another merit that glorifies both man and woman: so much loving the homeland to an extent with being ready to sacrifice his/her life, if needed. Turks are such courageous and virtuous people. That is why you can kill a Turk but you can never defeat them.
There is change in all things. You yourself are subject to continual change and some decay, and this is common to the entire universe.
Keep constantly in mind in how many things you yourself have witnessed changes already. The universe is change, life is understanding.
Show me a family of readers, and I will show you the people who move the world.
The hand that gives is among the hand that takes. Money has no fatherland, financiers are without patriotism and without decency, their sole object is gain.
The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other. They are worse than ever when, at the termination of their punishment, they return to society.
Each state claims the right to control interests foreign to itself when those interests are such that it can control them without putting its own interests in danger. ... other powers only recognize this right of intervening in proportion as the country doing it has the power to do it.
Victory is not always winning the battle...but rising every time you fall.
Let her sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world.
How easy it is to repel and release every impression which is troublesome and immediately to be tranquil.
What we do in life ripples in eternity.
We walk faster when we walk alone.
The controlling Intelligence understands its own nature, and what it does, and whereon it works.
He who cannot look over a battlefield with a dry eye, causes the death of many men uselessly.
Retire into thyself. The rational principle which rules has this nature, that it is content with itself when it does what is just, and so secures tranquility.
A King should sacrifice the best affections of his heart for the good of his country; no sacrifice should be above his determination.
This is the mark of a perfect character - to pass through each day as though it were the last, without agitation, without torpor, and without pretense.
How many together with whom I came into the world are already gone out of it.
Lead the ideas of your time and they will accompany and support you; fall behind them and they drag you along with them; oppose them and they will overwhelm you.
I love power. But it is as an artist that I love it. I love it as a musician loves his violin, to draw out its sounds and chords and harmonies.
Everything is interwoven, and the web is holy; none of its parts are unconnected. They are composed harmoniously, and together - they compose the world.
Death is a release from the impressions of the senses, and from desires that make us their puppets, and from the vagaries of the mind, and from the hard service of the flesh.
History is a myth that men agree to believe.
Be mindful at all times of the following: the nature of the whole universe, the nature of the part that is me, the relation of the one to the other, the one so vast, the other so small.
In one way an arrow moves, in another way the mind. The mind indeed, both when it exercises caution and when it is employed about inquiry, moves straight onward not the less, and to its object.
Reflect often upon the rapidity with which all existing things, or things coming into existence, sweep past us and are carried away.
What does not benefit the hive is no benefit to the bee.
Men have their virtues and their vices, their heroisms and their perversities; men are neither wholly good nor wholly bad, but possess and practice all that there is of good and bad here below. Such is the general rule. Temperament, education, the accidents of life, are modifying factors. Outside of this, everything is ordered arrangement, everything is chance. Such has been my rule of expectation and it has usually brought me success.
There is no man so blessed that some who stand by his deathbed won't hail the occasion with delight.
Occupation is the scythe of time.
So you know how things stand. Now forget what they think of you. Be satisfied if you can live the rest of your life, however short, as your nature demands. Focus on that, and don't let anything distract you. You've wandered all over and finally realized that you never found what you were after: how to live. Not in syllogisms, not in money, or fame, or self-indulgence. Nowhere.
Keep a good table and attend to the ladies.
What my enemies call a general peace is my destruction. What I call peace is merely the disarmament of my enemies. Am I not more moderate than they?
Because other people are fools, must you be so too?
A fool is only troublesome, a pedant insupportable.
My only fear is doing something contrary to human nature - the wrong thing, the wrong way, or at the wrong time.
To negotiate is not to do as one likes.
No one loses any other life than the one he now lives, nor does one live any other life than that which he will lose.
Tis a principle of war that when you can use the lightning, 'tis better than cannon.
Laws which are consistent in theory often prove chaotic in practice.
All things fade and quickly turn to myth.
Pray look upon the plants and birds, the ants, spiders, and bees, and you will see them all exerting their nature, and busy in their station. Pray, shall not a man act like a man?
Time is like a river made up of the events which happen, and a violent stream; for as soon as a thing has been seen, it is carried away, and another comes in its place, and this will be carried away too.
In an expression of true gratitude, sadness is conspicuous only by its absence
As for others whose lives are not so ordered, he reminds himself constantly of the characters they exhibit daily and nightly at home and abroad, and of the sort of society they frequent; and the approval of such men, who do not even stand well in their own eyes, has no value for him.
The most constant, the most powerful, and the most generous of all my enemies.
