To be happy you must have taken the measure of your powers, tasted the fruits of your passion, and learned your place in the world.

Trust the man who hesitates in his speech and is quick and steady in action, but beware of long arguments and long beards.

For gold is tried in the fire and acceptable men in the furnace of adversity.

A grateful environment is a substitute for happiness. It can quicken us from without as a fixed hope and affection, or as the consciousness of a right life, can quicken us from within.

Even under the most favorable circumstances no mortal can be asked to seize the truth in its wholeness or at its center.

My remembrance of the past is a novel I am constantly recomposing; and it would not be a historical novel, but sheer fiction, if the material events which mark and ballast my career had not their public dates and characters scientifically discoverable.

We crave support in vanity, as we do in religion, and never forgive contradictions in that sphere.