“The aphorism "as a man thinketh in his heart so is he" contains the secret of life.”

“An aphorism can contain only as much wisdom as overstatement will permit.”

Clifton Fadiman (1904–1999) American editor

“601. The fatt man knoweth not what the leane thinketh.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

“The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

“Spiritual inebriation is this: that a man receives more sensible joy and sweetness than his heart can either contain or desire.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

“No healthy man, in his secret heart, is content with his destiny. He is tortured by dreams and images as a child is tortured by the thought of a state of existence in which it would live in a candy store and have two stomachs.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

“A man's life is an appendix to his heart.”

Robert South (1634–1716) English theologian

“Both the aphorism and the poem channel man’s wild impulse to escape the systems another part of him has so carefully constructed.”

Clifton Fadiman (1904–1999) American editor

“Sin is the sharpest scourge that any chosen soul may be smitten with: which scourge thoroughly beateth man and woman, and maketh him hateful in his own sight, so far forth that afterwhile he thinketh himself he is not worthy but as to sink in hell, — till when contrition taketh him by touching of the Holy Ghost, and turneth the bitterness into hopes of God’s mercy.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

“In the ice of solitude man becomes most inexorably a question to himself, and just because the question pitilessly summons and draws into play his most secret life he becomes an experience to himself.”

Martin Buber (1878–1965) German Jewish Existentialist philosopher and theologian