Everywhere man is confronted with fate, with the chance of achieving something through his own suffering.

And every man, in love or pride, Of his fate is ever wide.

A man's fate is his own temper.

But the whole circumstances of time, place, and incident, combined at once to awaken his imagination, and to call upon him for a manly and decisive tone of conduct, leaving to fate to dispose of the issue.

Each man does seek his own interest, but, unfortunately, not according to the dictates of reason.

The vital force that drives men to throw away their lives and those of others in the pursuit of an imaginative impulse, reckless of its apparent effect on human welfare, is, like all natural forces, given to us in enormous excess to provide against an enormous waste. Therefore men, instead of economizing it by consecrating it to the service of their highest impulses, grasp at a phrase in a newspaper article, or in the speech of a politician on a vote-catching expedition, as an excuse for exercising it violently, just as a horse turned out to grass will gallop and kick merely to let off steam. The shallowness of the ideals of men ignorant of history is their destruction.

Everywhere man blames nature and fate, yet his fate is mostly but the echo of his character and passions, his mistakes and weaknesses.

Men experience many passions in a lifetime. One passion drives away the one before it.

Men decide far more problems by hate, love, lust, rage, sorrow, joy, hope, fear, illusion or some other inward emotion, than by reality, authority, any legal standard, judicial precedent, or statute.

The claim that every man kills the thing he loves seemed to him a wild guess compared with the near certainty of a man turning into the thing he hates.

Everywhere man blames nature and fate yet his fate is mostly but the echo of his character and passion, his mistakes and his weaknesses.

The passions of a revolution are apt to hurry even good men into excesses.

Men grew desperate and the border between bitter frustration and wild destruction is sometimes easily crossed.

men don't allow themselves to be killed for their interest, they allow themselves to be killed for their passion