Nothing can be meaner than the anxiety to live on, to live on anyhow and in any shape; a spirit with any honor is not willing to live except in its own way, and a spirit with any wisdom is not over-eager to live at all.

The diseases which destroy a man are no less natural than the instincts which preserve him.

The constant demands of the heart and the belly can allow man only an incidental indulgence in the pleasures of the eye and the understanding.

You and I possess manifold ideal bonds in the interests we share; but each of us has his poor body and his irremediable, incommunicable dreams.

To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.

Intolerance is a form of egotism, and to condemn egotism intolerantly is to share it.

Every real object must cease to be what it seemed, and none could ever be what the whole soul desired.