July 28

Self-perfection is always preceded by repentance. It is bad if a human being thinks that he or his people have no need to repent.

1

It is dangerous to seek the cause of evil outside of ourselves. This makes repentance impossible.

— Robertson

2

You should live in such a way that you could share everything that is on your soul with your worst enemy.

— Seneca

3

To not confess your wrongdoings is to multiply them.

4

When an individual is miserable, what does it most of all behove him to do? To complain of this man or of that, of this thing or of that? To fill the world and the street with lamentation, objurgation? Not so at all; the reverse of so. All moralists advise him not to complain of any person or of any thing, but of himself only. He is to know of a truth that being miserable he has been unwise, he. Had he faithfully followed Nature and her Laws, Nature, ever true to her Laws, would have yielded fruit and increase and felicity to him: but he has followed other than Nature’s Laws; and now Nature, her patience with him being ended, leaves him desolate; answers with very emphatic significance to him: No. Not by this road, my son; by another road shalt thou attain well-being: this, thou perceivest is the road to ill-being; quit this!—So do all moralists advise: that the man penitently say to himself first of all, Behold I was not wise enough; I quitted the laws of Fact, which are also called the Laws of God, and mistook for them the laws of Sham and Semblance, which are called the Devil’s Laws; therefore am I here!

— Carlyle

5

My heart is heavy. In all my long life I have never made anyone happy; neither my friends, nor my family, nor even myself. I have done much, much evil… I am guilty of causing three great wars. More than 800,000 men had died on the battlefields because of me; their mothers, brothers and widows now mourn for them… And all this stands between me and God.

— Bismarck

The faster a human being moves towards infinite perfection, irrespective of the step on which he is currently at, the better he is. And the speed of the movement always depends on the degree of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with oneself.