Miscellaneous Quotes

One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.
Maya Angelou (1928 – ) – As quoted in Diversity : Leaders Not Labels (2006) by Stedman Graham, p. 224. While widely attributed to Maya Angelou,  there is no primary source where this wording appears.

I hold that wealth and poverty lie not in a man’s estate, but in men themselves; for the soul is the seat of wealth.
Modern paraphrase: Wealth and poverty do not lie in a person’s estate, but in their souls.
Antisthenes (445 BC- 365 BC) – Xenophon, Syumposium, iv. 34. https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Xen.%20Sym.%204.34

Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.
Marcus Aurelius (121- 180) – Meditations (c. 161–180 CE) Book III, 7. https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Aur.%20Med.%203.7&lang=original

Outward appearances are deemed of little worth, unless accompanied by an inward and unseen beauty of the mind. The greatest ornament is the inward beauty of the mind.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) attributed,  Source: Advice to Rutland, 1595, The Shakespeare symphony: an introduction to the ethics of the Elizabethan drama, By Harold Bayley, 1906, p28.

Our heart is a treasury; if you pour out all its wealth at once, you are bankrupt.
Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) – Le Père Goriot (1835), Translated by Ellen Marriage, Part I.

Troubles are usually the brooms and shovels that smooth the road to a man’s good fortune, of which he little dreams; and many a man curses the rain that falls upon his head, and knows not that it brings abundance to drive away hunger; as is seen in the person of a young man, of whom I will tell you.
Giambattista Basile (circa 1575-1632) Stories from the Pentamerone, The Merchant, trans John Edward Taylor, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2198

In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer
Albert Camus (1913-1960) – Return to Tipasa (1952)

Where there is great love there are always miracles.
Willa Cather (1873-1947) – Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927), Book 9, Chapter 4.

If you can’t distinguish a man from a lap-dog, you have no business to go in for philanthropy — you’re not fit for it.
Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) – The Princess (1886) https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/13505/pg13505.txt