He has great tranquility of heart who cares neither for the praises nor the fault-finding of men.

As soon as coffee is in your stomach, there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move…similes arise, the paper is covered. Coffee is your ally and writing ceases to be a struggle.

No hawk swooping down upon his prey, no stag improvising new detours by which to trick the huntsman, no dog scenting game from afar is comparable in speed to the celerity of a salesman when he gets wind a deal, to his skill in tripping up or forestalling a rival, and to the art with which he sniffs out and discovers a possible sale.

A vocation is born to us all; happily most of us meet promptly our twin,--occupation.

The boor covers himself, the rich man or the fool adorns himself, and the elegant man gets dressed.

How can we explain the perpetuity of envy--a vice which yields no return?

A penniless man who has no ties to bind him is master of himself at any rate, but a luckless wretch who is in love no longer belongs to himself, and may not take his own life. Love makes us almost sacred in our own eyes; it is the life of another that we revere within us; then and so begins for us the cruelest trouble of all.