Not even nothingness preceded life. Nothingness owes its very idea to existence.

The best preparation for the future is the present well seen to, and the last duty done.

It may be an infinitely less evil to murder a man than to refuse to forgive him. The former may be the act of a moment of passion: the latter is the heart’s choice.

Above all things, I delight in listening to stories, and sometimes in telling them.

But for money and the need of it, there would not be half the friendship in the world. It is powerful for good if divinely used. Give it plenty of air and it is sweet as the hawthorn; shut it up and it cankers and breeds worms.

Now and then, when I look round on my books, they seem to waver as if a wind rippled their solid mass, and another world were about to break through.

But, for as cold and wretched as it looks, the sun has not forsaken it. He has only drawn away from it a little, for good reasons, one of which is that we may learn that we cannot do without him.