It is our relation to circumstances that determine their influence over us. The same wind that blows one ship into port may blow another off shore.

Pleasure and pain spring not so much from the nature of things, as from our manner of considering them. Pleasure, especially, is never an invariable effect of particular circumstances.

Melancholy sees the worst of things...[rather than the best]

Truth, like the sun, submits to be obscured; but, like the sun, only for a time.

He half retrieves a defeat who yields to it gracefully.

The best evidence of merit is a cordial recognition of it whenever and wherever it may be found.

Excessive sensibility is only another name for morbid self-consciousness.