The soul grows by subtraction, not addition.

I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. . . . In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.

Do what nobody else can do for you. Omit to do anything else.

When we come down into the distant village, visible from the mountain-top, the nobler inhabitants with whom we peopled it have departed, and left only vermin in its desolate streets. It is the imagination of poets which puts those brave speeches into the mouths of their heroes.

Most men I do not meet at all, for they seem not to have time; they are busy about their beans.

Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.

Hence it will not do for the Landlord to possess too fine a nature.... He must have no idiosyncracies, no particular bents or tendencies to this or that, but a general, uniform, and healthy development, such as his portly person indicates, offering himself equally on all sides to men.