Italo Svevo

"Art is life viewed through a distorted lens."

"To know oneself is the beginning of all wisdom, yet it is also the most difficult task."

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but the continuation despite it."

"We are all actors in our own melodrama."

"The businessman's creed is simple: profit above all else."

"Imagination is the companion of hope."

"In silence, one discovers what words cannot reveal."

"The family is where we learn to be human, or fail to."

"Hope is the last refuge of the desperate."

"Truth is a light too bright for most to bear."

"Work is the refuge of those who have no character."

"Beauty exists only in the eye of the beholder, making it utterly subjective."

"Friendship is born when one person says to another: 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one.'"

"Patience is the virtue of those too weak to be impatient."

"Health is not the absence of disease but the acceptance of impermanence."

"The dreamer who acts is more dangerous than the man of action who does not dream."

"Kindness is often misinterpreted as weakness by the ambitious."

"Power corrupts not through its use, but through the desire for it."

"Adventure begins where comfort ends."

"Music speaks to the soul in languages the mind cannot understand."

"Faith is the belief in things we cannot prove and do not fully understand."

"Leadership is the burden of those who see what others cannot."

"The educated man is not the one who knows the most, but the one who knows how to learn."

"Peace is not the absence of conflict but the mastery of it."

"Nature teaches those willing to listen with humility."

"Science reveals the mechanisms of the world; art reveals its meaning."

"History is written by those who survive to tell the tale."

"Politics is the art of persuading people to want what you want them to want."

"War is the failure of all other human endeavors."

"Motivation fades; discipline remains."