In the case of all things which have a certain constitution, whatever harm may happen to any of them, that which is affected becomes consequently worse; but in like case, a man becomes both better... and more worthy of praise, by making the right use of these accidents.
Do not imagine that it is less an accident by which you find yourself master of the wealth which you possess, than that by which this man found himself king.
If it had pleased them [the legislators] to order that this wealth, after having been possessed by fathers during their life, should return to the republic after their death, you would have no reason to complain of it.
Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.
O conscience, upright and stainless, how bitter sting to thee is a little fault!
He goes seeking liberty, which is so dear, as he knows who for it renounces life.
Whether a person feels positive or not is kind of a comment on their personality and of no great interest. You can find positive signs or you can find negative signs. How you evaluate them depends on something that happened in your life recently or something like that. There's no objective way to do it. The important thing is you try to commit yourself to making the positive signs more real. Suppose you felt that there's 99 percent of a probability that human civilization is going to be destroyed in the next hundred years, but one percent chance it won't be, and that one percent offers some opportunities to do something. Well, you commit yourself to that one percent.
Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.
If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.
If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion.
Human language appears to be a unique phenomenon, without significant analogue in the animal world.