relations

The go-between wears out a thousand sandals.

It is well to remember that the entire population of the universe with one trifling exception is composed of others.

At bottom the world isn't a joke. We only joke about it to avoid an issue with someone to let someone know that we know he's there with his questions to disarm him by seeming to have heard and done justice to his side of the standing argument.

Outside among your fellows among strangers you must preserve appearances 100 things you cannot do but inside the terrible freedom!

When the man is at home his standing in society is well known and quietly taken but when he is abroad it is problematical and is dependent on the success of his manners.

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labours of other men living and dead and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received.

One kind word can warm three winter months.

Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggie" until you can find a rock.

We wander through this life together in a semi-darkness in which none of us can distinguish exactly the features of his neighbour. Only from time to time through some experience that we have of our companion or through some remark that he passes he stands for a moment close to us as though illuminated by a flash of lightning. Then we see him as he really is.

When you live next to the cemetery you cannot weep for everyone.

We accept every person in the world as that for which he gives himself out only he must give himself out for something. We can put up with the unpleasant more easily than we can endure the insignificant.

In any relationship we feel an unconscious need to create as it were a new picture a new edition of ourselves to present to the fresh person who claims our interest for them we in a strange sense wish to and do start life anew.

A sense of duty is useful in work but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked not be endured with patient resignation.

I present myself to you in a form suitable to the relationship I wish to achieve with you.

A sudden bold and unexpected question doth many times surprise a man and lay him open.

The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them but to be indifferent to them that's the essence of inhumanity.

We rarely confide in those who are better than we are.

The fact is that the possession of a highly social conscience about large-scale issues is no guarantee whatever of reasonable conduct in private relations.