Philosophy is a more intense sort of experience than common life is, just as pure and subtle music, heard in retirement, is something keener and more intense than the howling of storms or the rumble of cities.

The Difficult is that which can be done immediately; the Impossible that which takes a little longer.

There is no dunce like a mature dunce.

A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness; happiness resides in imaginative reflection and judgment, when the picture of one's life, or of human life, as it truly has been or is, satisfies the will, and is gladly accepted.

Oaths are the fossils of piety.

Friends need not agree in everything or go always together, or have no comparable other friendships of the same intimacy.

Nothing you can lose by dying is half as precious as the readiness to die, which is man's charter of nobility.