I like it when poems are challenging, when they concern matters important and personal to the author.
Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability.
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.
Pride is an established conviction of one’s own paramount worth in some particular respect, while vanity is the desire of rousing such a conviction in others, and it is generally accompanied by the secret hope of ultimately coming to the same conviction oneself. Pride works from within; it is the direct appreciation of oneself. Vanity is the desire to arrive at this appreciation indirectly, from without.
The majority of men. . . are not capable of thinking, but only of believing, and. . . are not accessible to reason, but only to authority.
Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.
It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.
That seems to be a woman who is genuinely depressed that this is the political dialogue she [Hillary Clinton] is been thrown into in the 21st century in running for president of the United States.
. . . people notice differences and expect every difference in form to convey some difference in meaning.
Freedom means the opportunity to be what we never thought we would be.
But they who give straight judgements to strangers and to those of the land and do not transgress what is just, for them the city flourishes and its people prosper.