Ne dozvolite detetu normalnu muziku niti književnost. Biće mu muka od onoga što ga okružuje. Ja već posle Servantesa nisam mogao, bez suza, da gledam ovo đubre oko nas. Dajte mu nešto lagano, optimistično, kako bi dete moglo da postane javni tužilac ili potpredsednica Vlade.
I generally try to avoid people and situations that put me in bad moods, which is good advice whether you care about productivity or not.
If I knew I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself.
Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.
One of the most critical skills in life—and yet never taught in school—is choosing where to direct your attention.
After graduation, the valedictorian will often get lapped by "average" people who better invest their time.
If you suffered in life and want other people to suffer as you did because "you turned out fine," you did not in fact turn out fine.
Nothing can make our life, or the lives of other people, more beautiful than perpetual kindness.
Psychologically there are two dangers to be guarded against in old age. One of these is undue absorption in the past. It does not do to live in memories, in regrets for the good old days, or in sadness about friends who are dead. One’s thoughts must be directed to the future, and to things about which there is something to be done. This is not always easy; one’s own past is a gradually increasing weight. It is easy to think to oneself that one’s emotions used to be more vivid than they are, and one’s mind more keen. If this is true it should be forgotten, and if it is forgotten it will probably not be true. The other thing to be avoided is clinging to youth in the hope of sucking vigour from its vitality. When your children are grown up they want to live their own lives, and if you continue to be as interested in them as you were when they were young, you are likely to become a burden to them, unless they are unusually callous. I do not mean that one should be without interest in them, but one’s interest should be contemplative and, if possible, philanthropic, but not unduly emotional. Animals become indifferent to their young as soon as their young can look after themselves, but human beings, owing to the length of infancy, find this difficult.
The man who acquires easily things for which he feels only a very moderate desire concludes that the attainment of desire does not bring happiness. If he is of a philosophic disposition, he concludes that human life is essentially wretched, since the man who has all he wants is still unhappy. He forgets that to be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways.