Common Quote by Samuel Johnson

Whoso neglects a thing which he suspects he ought to do, because it seems to him too small a thing, is deceiving himself; it…

— Edward Bouverie Pusey

This is the part of a great man, after he has maturely weighed all circumstances, to punish the guilty, to spare the many, and…

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

“does a man who makes his observations while he himself is a prisoner possess the necessary detachment? Such detachment is granted to the outsider,…

— Victor Frankl

“The more there is about the individual that deviates in an undesirable direction from what might have been expected to be true of him,…

— Erving Goffman

The small man thinks that small acts of goodness are of no benefit, and does not do them; and that small deeds of evil…

— Confucius

“He that seeketh victory over his nature, let him not set himself too great, nor too small tasks; for the first will make him…

— Francis Bacon

“But he had seen so little of life and the world himself, that he could scarcely help being one-sided and narrow-minded; and as he…

— Mrs. Alfred Gatty

“Yet, with a weakness of mind not uncommon to great criminals, he shrank from the thoughts of his own baseness and cruelty, and endeavored…

— Walter Scott

“It is a human characteristic, which has been richly exploited in every era, that while hope of survival is still alive in a man,…

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

“Having acknowledged that a man must master his circumstances or otherwise be mastered by them, the Count thought it worth considering how one was…

— Amor Towles

Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The Englishman, be it noted, seldom resorts to violence; when he is sufficiently goaded he simply opens up, like the oyster, and devours his…

— Henry Miller