I studied Shakespeare all through high school. Both of my parents teach English and history, so it has always been around my experience as a young man.

What is the appropriate behavior for a man or a woman in the midst of this world, where each person is clinging to his piece of debris? What’s the proper salutation between people as they pass each other in this flood?

The one who has conquered himself is a far greater hero than he who has defeated a thousand times a thousand men.

To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one’s family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one’s own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.

It is a man’s own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.

“Avoid evil deeds as a man who loves life avoids poison.”

Drop by drop is the water pot filled. Likewise, the wise man, gathering it little by little, fills himself with good.

You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him

“The world cares little about what a man knows;it cares more about what a man is able to do.” 

Character, not circumstances, makes the man

One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.

“Instead of studying books so constantly, how I wish that our schools and colleges might learn to study men and things!”

“I will permit no man to narrow & degrade my sould by making me hate him.”

“I shall never permit myself to stoop so low as to hate any man.”

No man, who continues to add something to the material, intellectual and moral well-being of the place in which he lives, is left long without proper reward

Great men cultivate love… Only little men cherish a spirit of hatred.

There is no escape — man drags man down, or man lifts man up.

Greed makes man blind and foolish, and makes him an easy prey for death.

If reason dominates in man, he rises higher than angels. If lust overpowers man, he descends lower than the beast.

Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.

One of the great tragedies of life is that men seldom bridge the gulf between practice and profession, between doing and saying.

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. This may well be mankind’s last chance to choose between chaos and community.

I submit to you that if a man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.

The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ But the good Samaritan reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’