If anyone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make excuses about what is said of you but answer, "He was ignorant of my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these alone.

Avoid banquets which are given by strangers an ignorant persons. But if there is ever occasion to join them, let your attention be carefully fixed, that you slip not into the manner of the vulgar (the uninstructed).

Confidence in nonsense is a requirement for the creative process.

The origin of sorrow is this: to wish for something that does not come to pass.

Know you not that a good man does nothing for appearance sake, but for the sake of having done right?

By accepting life's limits and inevitabilities and working with them rather than fighting them, we become free.

A soul that makes virtue its companion is like an over-flowing well, for it is clean and pellucid, sweet and wholesome, open to all, rich, blameless and indestructible.