“It is a great misfortune not to possess sufficient wit to speak well, nor sufficient judgment to keep silent
“I shall argue that strong men, conversely, know when to compromise and that all principles can be compromised to serve a greater principle
“All that a man does outwardly is but the expression and completion of his inward thought. To work effectively, he must think clearly; to act nobly, he must think nobly
“Gullibility is the key to all adventures. The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he who get the most out of life
“A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions and their motives - of approving of some and disapproving of others
“We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities... still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.
“Who would wish to be among the commonplace crowd of the little famous - who are each individually lost in a throng made up of themselves?
“Negative capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.
“Morality is a venereal disease. Its primary stage is called virtue; its secondary stage, boredom; its tertiary stage, syphilis
“Every man has his moral backside which he refrains from showing unless he has to and keeps covered as long as possible with the trousers of decorum
“Good nature is worth more than knowledge, more than money, more than honor, to the persons who possess it.
“It is fortunate to be of high birth, but it is no less so to be of such character that people do not care to know whether you are or are not.
“As favor and riches forsake a man, we discover in him the foolishness they concealed, and which no one perceived before
“To extinguish the free will is to strike the conscience with death, for both have but one and the same life
“I will give you a definition of a proud man: he is a man who has neither vanity nor wisdom, one filled with hatreds cannot be vain, neither can he be wise
“This is something that I cannot get over, that a whole line could be written by half a man, that a work could be built on the quicksand of a character
“It is not the truth that a man possesses, or believes that he possesses, but the earnest effort which he puts forward to reach the truth, which constitutes the worth of a man.