There is one respect in which beasts show real wisdom... their quiet, placid enjoyment of the present moment.

What makes people hard-hearted is this, that each man has, or fancies he has, as much as he can bear in his own troubles.

Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.

(Politeness is) a tacit agreement that people's miserable defects, whether moral or intellectual, shall on either side be ignored and not be made the subject of reproach.

In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in a theatre before the curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the play to begin. It is a blessing that we do not know what is really going to happen. Could we foresee it, there are times when children might seem like innocent prisoners, condemned, not to death, but to life, and as yet all unconscious of what their sentence means.

For our improvement we need a mirror.

There is no opinion, however absurd, which men will not readily embrace as soon as they can be brought to the conviction that it is generally adopted.