“There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”

“He is to be pitied, to tell the truth, in his coming into the world as a king, for he is but a man--and having to waste himself on a pack of nonsense instead of sticking to our art, in which he makes good way.”

— Alexandre Dumas《The Hero of the People: A Historical Romance of Love, Liberty and Loyalty》

“Your mother thought that as you and I, in a short time, have become, so to say, friends, and you have some confidence in me, I am in a position to give you good advice—and you would mind what I say.”

— Ivan Turgenev《The Torrents of Spring》

“And at last he got to the mines, and he was condemned to stay there for life--for life, just for writing a good, noble, splendid book.”

— Edith Nesbit《The Railway Children》

“It is better to honor a good man in life than to worship him after he is dead.”

— José Rizal《Rizal's own story of his life》

“I have thought since of the wonderful goodness of God to me in preserving me in the use of my reason and senses in that distressed time, that I did not use wicked and violent means to end my own miserable life.”

— Mary Rowlandson《Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson》

“But ere that time he had studied to good effect, and not books alone, but the world around him too, and the world within.”

— Dante Alighieri《The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri》

“How strange it is, that a fool or a knave, with riches, should be treated with more respect by the world, than a good man, or a wise man in poverty!”

— Ann Radcliffe《The Mysteries of Udolpho》

“So that when you are in harmony with nature in this respect, you will be elated with some reason; for you will be elated at some good of your own.”

— Epictetus《The Enchiridion》

“Shut in and morbid as his life had been, Colin had more imagination than she had and at least he had spent a good deal of time looking at wonderful books and pictures.”

— Frances Hodgson Burnett《The Secret Garden》

“And mind governs reason, and reason obeys mind; and mind is irremovable by fortune, cannot be taken away by informers, cannot be destroyed by disease, cannot have inroads made into it by old age.”

— Plutarch《Plutarch's Morals》

“The Soul is brought by the Truth to a knowledge of the Heavenly Life (Coelia), and is led, through repentance, to seek forgiveness and to desire a holier life.”

— Edmund Spenser《Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I》

“The friend praying at her side was forgotten, the world had vanished, every law of reason was annihilated, all knowledge was out of her mind--every hard-won conquest of human empiricism was effaced.”

— Wilhelmine von Hillern《On the Cross: A Romance of the Passion Play at Oberammergau》