To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves; let us be above such transparent egotism. If you can't say good and encouraging thin… - Will Durant

To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves. . . let us be above such transparent egotism.

Let us ask the Gods not for possessions, but for things to do; happiness is in making things rather than consuming them.

Why is it that great men so often have mediocrities for their offspring? Is it because the gamble of the genes that produced them — the commingling of ancestral traits and biological possibilities — was but a chance, and could not be expected to recur? Or is it because the genius exhausts in thought and toil the force that might have gone to parentage, and leaves only his diluted blood to his heirs? Or is it that children decay under ease, and early good fortune deprives them of the stimulus to ambition and growth?

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.