De vita solitaria (1346) as quoted in Madalyn Aslan's Jupiter Signs: How to Improve Your Luck, Career, Health, Finances, Appearance, and Relationships Through the New Astrology (2003) by Madalyn Aslan
Source: A Mother's Advice to Her Son, 1726, p. 139
“More glorious to merit a sceptre than to possess one.”
Memoirs of Napoleon (1829-1831)
“Unless one is happy, one cannot bestow happiness on others.”
Abide as the Self
Colonel Richard Cantwell and Renata in Ch. 38
Across the River and into the Trees (1950)
Il y a une élévation qui ne dépend point de la fortune: c’est un certain air qui nous distingue et qui semble nous destiner aux grandes choses; c’est un prix que nous nous donnons imperceptiblement à nous-mêmes; c’est par cette qualité que nous usurpons les déférences des autres hommes, et c’est elle d’ordinaire qui nous met plus au-dessus d’eux que la naissance, les dignités, et le mérite même.
Maxim 399.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)
La galantería y la honra tienen esta ventaja, que se quedan: aquélla en quien la usa, ésta en quien la haze.
Maxim 118: (p. 66)
The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)
"The Great Good Man" (1802).
Context: How seldom, friend! a good great man inherits
Honor or wealth, with all his worth and pains!
It sounds like stories from the land of spirits
If any man obtain that which he merits,
Or any merit that which he obtains.
.........
Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends!
Hath he not always treasures, always friends,
The good great man? Three treasures,—love and light,
And calm thoughts, regular as infants' breath;
And three firm friends, more sure than day and night,—
Himself, his Maker, and the angel Death.
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 455.
“The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker.”
"The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker" was later used as Nixon's epitaph.
1960s, First Inaugural Address (1969)
Context: What kind of nation we will be, what kind of world we will live in, whether we shape the future in the image of our hopes, is ours to determine by our actions and our choices.
The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker. This honor now beckons America — the chance to help lead the world at last out of the valley of turmoil, and onto that high ground of peace that man has dreamed of since the dawn of civilization.
If we succeed, generations to come will say of us now living that we mastered our moment, that we helped make the world safe for mankind.
This is our summons to greatness.
