No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.

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.

God has created too few unmixed evils to warrant the belief that death is one of them. In all things else in nature, goodness so abounds that we are authorized to infer that it does not stop even at the grave. It is only that her footprints have become invisible.

Partial culture runs to the ornate, extreme culture to simplicity.

The lively and mercurial are as open books, with the leaves turned down at the notable passages. Their souls sit at the windows of their eyes, seeing and to be seen.

Wine is a treacherous friend who you must always be on guard for.

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.