Sobriety, severity, and self-respect are the foundations of all true sociality.

Perfect sincerity and transparency make a great part of beauty, as in dewdrops, lakes, and diamonds.

If the tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me, as one has done, "But what shall I do?" my answer is, "If you really wish to do anything, resign your office." When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished.

There are none happy in the world but beings who enjoy freely a vast horizon.

I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks - who had the genius, so to speak, for sauntering: which word is beautifully derived "from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked for charity, under the pretense of going à la Sainte Terre," to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a Sainte-Terrer," a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander.

The man who does not betake himself at once and desperately to sawing is called a loafer, though he may be knocking at the doors of heaven all the while.

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.