These are some of my favorite quotes from a variety of people in different walks of life and time periods. (I did include one humorous quote from Proust about intellectuals. The rest of the quotes are rather serious and poignant.)
“We all wear masks and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing our own skin.” André Berthiaume
“Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.” Confucius
“I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary. The evil it does is permanent.” Mahatma Gandhi
“When I despair, I remember that all through history there have been tyrants and murderers, at the time they seemed invincible, but in the end they always fall. Always.” Mahatma Gandhi
“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls. The most massive characters are seared with scars.” Khalil Gibran
“Although the world is full of suffering.. it is also full of overcoming it.” Helen Keller
“It’s hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head.” Sally Kempton
“Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.” Stephen King
“I have always found that mercy bears richer fruit than strict justice.” Abraham Lincoln
“There is no such thing as part freedom.” Nelson Mandela
“Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity nothing exceeds the criticisms made of the habits of the poor by the well housed, well warmed, and well fed.” Herman Melville
“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” George Orwell
“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark, the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” Plato
“Like many intellectuals, he was incapable of saying a simple thing in a simple way.” Marcel Proust
“Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.” Marcel Proust
“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.” Eleanor Roosevelt
“The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.” Harriet Beecher Stowe
“I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.” Mother Teresa
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Leo Tolstoy
“‘He who controls others may be powerful but he who has mastered himself is mightier still.” Lao Tzu
“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” Lao Tzu
