A Quote by Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The most brilliant fortunes are often not worth the littleness required to gain them.
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Most people know no other way of judging men's worth but by the vogue they are in, or the fortunes they have met with.
The most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20. The most brilliant idea takes great execution to be worth $20,000,000.
I believe the government has the right to recover from the heirs to the fortunes of its most successful citizens some portion of those fortunes.
I have often had occasion to remark the fortitude with which women sustain the most overwhelming reverses of fortunes.
It's often said that everybody has a story to tell, and I suppose that's true, but the problem is that most of them aren't worth telling.
The happy man . . . will be always or at least most often employed in doing and contemplating the things that are in conformity with virtue. And he will bear changes of fortunes most nobly, and with perfect propriety in every way.
One very common thing is that often very brilliant children stop working because they're praised so often that it's what they want to live as - brilliant - not as someone who ever makes mistakes. It really stunts their motivation.
Some men make fortunes, but not to enjoy them for, blinded by avarice, they live to make fortunes.
It is worth remembering that the time of greatest gain in terms of wisdom and inner strength is often that of greatest difficulty.
But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success.
I can easily believe it. Women of that class have great opportunities, and if they are intelligent may be well worth listening to. Such varieites of human nature as they are in the habit of witnessing! And it is not merely in its follies, that they are read; for they see it occasionally under every circumstance that can be most interesting or affecting. What instances must pass before them of ardent, disinterested, self-denying attachment, of heroism, fortitude, patience, resignation-- of all the sacrifices that ennoble us most. A sick chamber may often furnish the worth of volumes.
Unfortunately, in collective bargaining one party or the other too often tries to gain an advantage - a bargain, like buying something in a store for less than it is worth.
The secret of the truly successful, I believe, is that they learned very early in life how not to be busy. They saw through that adage, repeated to me so often in childhood, that anything worth doing is worth doing well. The truth is, many things are worth doing only in the most slovenly, halfhearted fashion possible, and many other things are not worth doing at all.
What is most important for democracy is not that great fortunes should not exist, but that great fortunes should not remain in the same hands. In that way there are rich men, but they do not form a class.
In the old days of literature, only the very thick-skinned - or the very brilliant - dared enter the arena of literary criticism. To criticise a person's work required equal measures of erudition and wit, and inferior critics were often the butt of satire and ridicule.
Without virtue, and without integrity, the finest talents and the most brilliant accomplishments can never gain the respect, and conciliate the esteem, of the truly valuable part of mankind.
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