Will localizes us, thought universalizes us.

Sadness takes up the pen more readily than joy.

In health there is freedom. Health is the first of all liberties.

Men of genius supply the substance of history, while the mass of men are but the critical filter, the limiting, slackening, passive force needed for the modification of ideas supplied by genius.

I have never felt any inward assurance of genius, or any presentiment of glory or of happiness. I have never seen myself in imagination great or famous, or even a husband, a father, an influential citizen. This indifference to the future, this absolute self-distrust, are, no doubt, to be taken as signs. What dreams I have are all vague and indefinite; I ought not to live, for I am now scarcely capable of living.

To understand is to possess the thing understood, first by sympathy and then by intelligence.

Charm is the quality in others that makes us more satisfied with ourselves.