A child from the time he can think should think about all he sees should suffer for all who cannot live with honesty should work so that all men can be honest and should be honest himself.

Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what without this book he would perhaps never have seen in himself.

I don't pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who does not work at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being.

Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another but let him work diligently and build one for himself thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.

Only the most unapologetic biblical fundamentalists for instance take every biblical injunction literally. If we all took all scripture at the same level of authority then we would be more open to slavery to the subjugation of women to wider use of stoning. Jesus himself spoke out frequently against divorce in the strongest of terms.

Women speak because they wish to speak whereas a man speaks only when driven to speak by something outside himself like for instance he can't find any clean socks.

The most mediocre of males feels himself a demigod as compared with women.

Wise kings generally have wise counselors and he must be a wise man himself who is capable of distinguishing one.

He who devotes sixteen hours a day to hard study may become at sixty as wise as he thought himself at twenty.

A fool flatters himself a wise man flatters the fool.

It is terrible to destroy a person's picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction.

This truth is a remedy against spiritual pride namely that none should account himself better before God than others though perhaps adorned with greater gifts and endowments.

The three-year-old who lies about taking a cookie isn't really a liar after all. He simply can't control his impulses. He then convinces himself of a new truth and eager for your approval reports the version that he knows will make you happy.

He who begins by loving Christianity more than Truth will proceed by loving his sect or church better than Christianity and end in loving himself better than all.

In the process of telling the truth about what you feel or what you see each of us has to get in touch with himself or herself in a really deep serious way.

The truth is the secular world isn't too enamored with Jesus. And they're not too enamored with someone who is leading people to Jesus. So if you're out there talking about people's sins and you're talking about righteousness you will get pushback. Jesus Himself did. The apostles did. I mean there's persecution all up and down the line.

He who does not bellow the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers.

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature to those who really like to study people is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he will tell you the truth.

A man who does not trust himself will never really trust anybody.

When a man has no reason to trust himself he trusts in luck.

So near is falsehood to truth that a wise man would do well not to trust himself on the narrow edge.

I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself.

When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.