“The wisest man is generally he who thinks himself the least so. ”
“No man is happy who does not think himself so.”
“Everyone should get at least one good look at the eyes of a man who finds himself rising toward what he wants to pull down to himself.”
“A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with – a man is what he makes of himself.”
“Can anything be imagined so ridiculous, that this miserable and wretched creature [man], who is not so much as master of himself, but subject to the injuries of all things, should call himself master and emperor of the world, of which he has not power to know the least part, much less to command the whole?”
“But he who neither thinks for himself nor learns from others, is a failure as a man.”