“Credulity is the man's weakness, but the child's strength.”

“Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.”

“It is a weak man who blames his failures on the strength of others.”

“A man's strength is ultimately born of his knowledge of his own weakness …”

“The weakness of men is the facade of strength; the strength of women is the facade of weakness.”

“There is only one man who gets his own way—he who can get it single-handed; therefore freedom, not power, is the greatest good. That man is truly free who desires what he is able to perform, and does what he desires. This is my fundamental maxim. Apply it to childhood, and all the rules of education spring from it. Society has enfeebled man, not merely by robbing him of the right to his own strength, but still more by making his strength insufficient for his needs. This is why his desires increase in proportion to his weakness; and this is why the child is weaker than the man. If a man is strong and a child is weak it is not because the strength of the one is absolutely greater than the strength of the other, but because the one can naturally provide for himself and the other cannot. Thus the man will have more desires and the child more caprices, a word which means, I take it, desires which are not true needs, desires which can only be satisfied with the help of others.”

“Man is weak and when he makes strength his profession he is even weaker.”

“The tragedy of old age, when a man’s too weak to hit his own child.”

“This is a great fact: strength is life; weakness is death. Strength is felicity, life eternal, immortal; weakness is constant strain and misery, weakness is death.”

“The remedy for weakness is not brooding over weakness, but thinking of strength. Teach men of strength that is already within them.”