Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.

Before I start painting I have a slightly ambiguous feeling: happiness is a special excitement because unhappiness is always possible a moment later.

It is idle to expect any great advancement in science from the superinducing and engrafting of new things upon old. We must begin anew from the very foundations, unless we would revolve for ever in a circle with mean and contemptible progress.

In every great time there is some one idea at work which is more powerful than any other, and which shapes the events of the time and determines their ultimate issues.

There arises from a bad and unapt formation of words a wonderful obstruction to the mind.

Whence we see spiders, flies, or ants entombed and preserved forever in amber, a more than royal tomb.

There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.