Life is not an easy matter... You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.
Leon Trotsky

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

If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.
Bertrand Russell

Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.
Bertrand Russell

There are very few personal problems that cannot be solved through a suitable application of high explosives.
Scott Adams

The salary of the chief executive of a large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself.
John Kenneth Galbraith

This show has been a major revitalization of my family life and personal life. It gave my family an avenue to speak to me honestly.
Willie Aames

Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking.
George Eliot

Hostesses who entertain much must make up their parties as ministers make up their cabinets, on grounds other than personal liking.
George Eliot

Whatever an artist's personal feelings are, as soon as an artist fills a certain area on the canvas or circumscribes it, he becomes historical. He acts from or upon other artists.
Willem de Kooning

To be idle requires a strong sense of personal identity.
Robert Louis Stevenson

Know the difference between principles based on right or wrong vs. principles based on personal gain, and consider the basis of your own principles.
Marilyn vos Savant

I think change is possible, but only for individuals who were never truly gay in the first place and who have a strong personal motivation to recover their heterosexuality.
Marilyn vos Savant

Devout believers are safeguarded in a high degree against the risk of certain neurotic illnesses; their acceptance of the universal neurosis spares them the task of constructing a personal one.
Anatole France

Just as he who gives his life to serve a great idea is admirable, he who avails himself of a great idea to serve his personal hopes of glory and power is abominable, even if he too risks his life.
Jose Marti

In those days a concert was a personal experience. I wanted to be as close as possible to the audience, and of course big stadiums didn't enable you to do that. It wasn't my style.
Cat Stevens

It's good to follow the path of personal happiness to some extent. People tend to get upset however when you drive a steamroller down it.
Simon Travaglia

I was not content to believe in a personal devil and serve him, in the ordinary sense of the word. I wanted to get hold of him personally and become his chief of staff.
Aleister Crowley

I cannot imagine any other country in the world where the opposition would seek, and the chief executive would allow, the dissemination of his most private and personal conversations with his staff, which, to be honest, do not exactly confer sainthood on anyone concerned.
Gerald R. Ford

Criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters.
Joseph Conrad