If it is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the condition of man,--and I think that it is, though only the wise improve their advantages,--it must be shown that it has produced better dwellings without making them more costly; and the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends... Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

We have built for this world a family mansion, and the next a family tomb. The best works of art are the expression of man's struggle to free himself from this condition, but the effect of our art is merely to make this low state comfortable and that higher state to be forgotten.

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

He who parades his virtues seldom leads the parade. He who puts up with insult invites injury. Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life. This life in the present.

As we grow older, we live more coarsely, we relax a little in our disciplines, and, to some extent, cease to obey our finest instincts. But we should be fastidious to the extreme of sanity, disregarding the gibes of those who are more unfortunate than ourselves.

Things do not change; we change.