A Quote by Washington Irving

Those who are well assured of their own standing are least apt to trespass on that of others, whereas nothing is so offensive as the aspirings of vulgarity which thinks to elevate itself by humiliating its neighbor.
... if a person is to be unconventional, he must be amusing or he is intolerable: for, in the nature of the case, he guarantees you nothing but amusement. He does not guarantee you any of the little amenities by which society has assured itself that, if it must go to sleep, it will at least sleep in a comfortable chair.
We should learn, by reflecting on the misfortunes which have attended others, that there is nothing singular in those which befall ourselves. [They have, are and will be experienced by others as well as worse.]
I would never call a neighbor an enemy. But I would request the neighbor to be a good neighbor, to see that the neighbor's interest is a stable prosperous neighbor, a neighbor that is doing well.
People are hungering for property — for a secure, permanent and independent link with spaceship earth that ownership represents and which only ownership can protect or defend. It is humiliating to possess nothing, to own nothing, and hence to produce nothing and to count for nothing.
Men are apt to mistake, or at least to seem to mistake, their own talents, in hopes, perhaps, of misleading others to allow them that which they are conscious they do not possess. Thus lord Hardwicke valued himself more upon being a great minister of state, which he certainly was not, than upon being a great magistrate, which he certainly was.
Self-confidence is apt to address itself to an imaginary dullness in others; as people who are well off speak in a cajoling tone to the poor.
Those who trespass in others' souls will always get burned in the end.
That truth which you swallow from others will not be yours...you have to realize truth and work it our for yourself according to your own nature...All must struggle to be individuals-strong, standing on your own feet, thinking your own thoughts, realizing you own Self. No use swallowing doctrines others pass on-standing up together like soldiers in jail, sitting down together, all eating the same food, all nodding their heads at the same time. Variation is the sign of life. Sameness is the sign of death.
Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.
I am fully assured, that no general method for the solution of questions in the theory of probabilities can be established which does not explicitly recognize, not only the special numerical bases of the science, but also those universal laws of thought which are the basis of all reasoning, and which, whatever they may be as to their essence, are at least mathematical as to their form.
Men look on knowledge which they learn--or might learn--from others as they do on the most beautiful structures which are not their own: in outward objects, they would rather behold their own hogsty than their neighbor's palace; and in mental ones, would prefer one grain of knowledge gained by their own observation to all the wisdom of a thousand Solomons.
Arrogance on the part of the meritorious is even more offensive to us than the arrogance of those without merit: for merit itself is offensive.
A well-read fool is the most pestilent of blockheads; his learning is a flail which he knows not how to handle, and with which he breaks his neighbor's shins as well as his own. Keep a fellow of this description at arm's length, as you value the integrity of your bones.
Every thing thinks, but according to its complexity. If this is so, then stones also think...and this stone thinks only I stone, I stone, I stone. But perhaps it cannot even say I. It thinks: Stone, stone, stone... God enjoys being All, as this stone enjoys being almost nothing, but since it knows no other way of being, it is pleased with its own way, eternally satisfied with itself.
Easy, simple and great laws, which await nothing but a sign from the lawgiver to spread prosperity and vigour throughout the nation, laws which would earn him immortal hymns of gratitude down the generations, are those which are least considered or least wanted.
Every new generation in its hour of dawn, filled with the dreams of youth, its thirsts, intoxications and enthusiasms, thinks itself called upon to impel humanity towards heights unmeasured, believes itself an appointed pathfinder, a thinker of thoughts, a doer of deeds greater than any of those which came before. Every new generation desires beauty, but a beauty all its own.
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