The habit of looking for beauty in everything makes us notice the shortcomings of things, our sense, hungry for complete satisfaction, misses the perfection it demands.

It is a great bond to dislike the same things.

Character is the basis of happiness and happiness the sanction of character.

By "essence" I understand a universal, of any degree of complexity and definition, which may be given immediately, whether to sense or to thought.... This object of pure sense or pure thought, with no belief superadded, an object inwardly complete and individual, but without external relations or physical status, is what I call an essence.

Friendship is almost always the union of a part of one mind with the part of another; people are friends in spots.

Catastrophes come when some dominant institution, swollen like a soap-bubble and still standing without foundations, suddenly crumbles at the touch of what may seem a word or idea, but is really some stronger material source.

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.