Never go to excess, but let moderation be your guide.

I realized, ‚Yo, I can’t do anything in moderation. I don’t know how.‘

To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

Moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have an alternative.

Many foxes grow gray but few grow good.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Do not be very upright in your dealings for you would see by going to the forest that straight trees are cut down while crooked ones are left standing.

Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; and number not voices, but weigh them.

There is no such thing as Something for nothing.

Don’t throw stones at your neighbors if your own windows are glass.

I explain the law of compensation like this: ‚Returns are minimal in spite of massive effort at the start, yet returns can be massive with minimal effort over time.

If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health.

Whatever possession we gain by our sword cannot be sure or lasting, but the love gained by kindness and moderation is certain and durable.

Just as discipline and freedom are opposing forces that must be balanced, leadership requires finding the equilibrium in the dichotomy of many seemingly contradictory qualities between one extreme and another.

Governing a great nation is like cooking a small fish – too much handling will spoil it.

Knowing that you are going to die is, I suspect, the beginning of wisdom.

Ignorant people see life as either existence or non-existence, but wise men see it beyond both existence and non-existence to something that transcends them both; this is an observation of the Middle Way.

When you’re older you want to learn from other people.

In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.

One should take good care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life as laughter.

You could not step twice into the same rivers; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.

The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.

Those thoughts are truth which guide us to beneficial interaction with sensible particulars as they occur, whether they copy these in advance or not.

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name. The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth; the Named is the mother of all things.

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.

Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.

In general, mankind, since the improvement of cookery, eats twice as much as nature requires.

You don’t have to give way to careless speech or complaining. You don’t have to let your feelings get in the way of what God wants to do in your life.

How do you know what it’s like to be stupid if you’ve never been smart?

Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.

Where there is shouting, there is no true knowledge.

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.

Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair; the rest is in the hands of God.

We humans have lost the wisdom of genuinely resting and relaxing. We worry too much. We don’t allow our bodies to heal, and we don’t allow our minds and hearts to heal.

No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.

A lie cannot live.

There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there.

I never give advice unless someone asks me for it. One thing I’ve learned, and possibly the only advice I have to give, is to not be that person giving out unsolicited advice based on your own personal experience.

What one fool can understand, another can.

We cannot learn men from books.

All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.

War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can’t smile, grin. If you can’t grin, keep out of the way till you can.

Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.

Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.

It is in life as it is in ways, the shortest way is commonly the foulest, and surely the fairer way is not much about.

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.

Time discovers truth.

Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.

When I feel I’m doing too much, I do less if I can.

He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.

Only you can control your future.

Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.

A quick temper will make a fool of you soon enough.

It is more difficult to rule yourself than to rule a city.

Sincere words are not fine; fine words are not sincere.

At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

No one can pass through life, any more than he can pass through a bit of country, without leaving tracks behind, and those tracks may often be helpful to those coming after him in finding their way.

Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.