Merit is never so conspicuous as when coupled with an obscure origin, just as the moon never appears so lustrous as when it emerges from a cloud.

Constant companionship is not enjoyable, any more than constant eating. We sit too long at the table of friendship, when we outsit our appetites for each other's thoughts.

We should round every day of stirring action with an evening of thought. We learn nothing of our experience except we muse upon it.

The great artist is a slave to his ideals.

The body of a sensualist is the coffin of a dead soul.

A good thought is indeed a great boon, for which God is to be first thanked; next he who is the first to utter it, and then, in a lesser, but still in a considerable degree, the friend who is the first to quote it to us. Whoever adopts and circulates a just thought, participates in the merit that originated it.

Cheerfulness is an offshoot of goodness and of wisdom.