Life is an apprenticeship to the constant renunciations, to the steady failure of our claims, our hopes, our powers, our liberty.

He who is too much afraid of being duped has lost the power of being magnanimous.

I find myself regarding existence as though from beyond the tomb, from another world; all is strange to me; I am, as it were, outside my own body and individuality; I am depersonalized, detached, cut adrift. Is this madness?

Happiness gives us the energy which is the basis of health.

The great majority of men are but tangled skeins, imperfect keyboards, so many specimens of restless or stagnant chaos--and what makes their situation almost hopeless is the fact that they take pleasure in it. There is no curing a sick man who believes himself in health.

Tell me what you feel in your room when the full moon is shining in upon you and your lamp is dying out, and I will tell you how old you are, and I shall know if you are happy.

The only substance properly so called is the soul.