Everything has two handles; the one soft and manageable, the other such as will not endure to be touched. If then your brother do you an injury, do not take it by the hot hard handle, by representing to yourself all the aggravating circumstances of the fact; but look rather on the soft side, and extenuate it as much as is possible, by considering the nearness of the relation, and the long friendship and familiarity between you--obligations to kindness which a single provocation ought not to dissolve. And thus you will take the accident by its manageable handle.

Bear in mind that you should conduct yourself in life as at a feast.

You are but an appearance, and not absolutely the thing you appear to be.

Books are the training weights of the mind.

It were no slight attainment could we merely fulfil what the nature of man implies.

If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.

No living being is held by anything so strongly as by its own needs. Whatever therefore appears a hindrance to these, be it brother, or father, or child, or mistress, or friend, is hated, abhorred, execrated.