Before you have faith you must believe, and before you believe there must be evidence of some sort to persuade the mind. Faith is remembering that evidence and holding to it against all that seems to challenge or contradict it.
We had been friends. We could not become strangers. It left only one thing: we must be enemies.
And a leader has to command confidence, and consent.
More and more I had come to see the Capped as lacking what seemed to me the essence of humanity, the vital spark of defiance against the rulers of the world.
Even if it is nonsense, it is often useful to know what kind of nonsense men believe.
A man faced death, but when death drew back forgot it until the next time.
What tricks the mind is what the mind is glad to be tricked by.
We all have to learn to live with our losses, and to use our regrets to spur us on in the future.
And though I remember her name I cannot recall her face. All things pass.
His anger was as great as mine, but hot where mine was cold.
Morality, for all the conditioning to which the human mind has been and is subjected, is always a personal choice in the last analysis.
The order should not have been given,’ she said. ‘It was not done for the city but for your private ends.’I shook my head. ‘There is no difference.’You believe that?’A Prince must, or he is no Prince.
In the realm of dream and imagination all men are equal.
Fritz was melancholic by nature, and could tolerate his own gloom. I do not think this is so with you, who are sanguine and impatient. In your case, remorse and despondency could be crippling.
I think before I act—and then think again. I am not entirely a coward, but I do not lose myself in action as you do.
The secret of success in battle lies often not so much in the use of one’s own strength but in the exploitation of the other side’s weaknesses.