It is the man determines what is said, not the words.

I have an immense appetite for solitude, like an infant for sleep, and if I don't get enough for this year, I shall cry all the next.

Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.

Men spend the best parts of their lives earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it.

We are happy in proportion to the things we can do without.

An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.

The sea-shore is a sort of neutral ground, a most advantageous point from which to contemplate the world....There is naked Nature, inhumanly sincere, wasting no thought on man, nibbling at the cliffy shore where gulls wheel amid the spray.