People will not bear it when advice is violently given, even if it is well founded. Hearts are flowers; they remain open to the softly falling dew, but shut up in the violent downpour of rain.

As a man grows older it is harder and harder to frighten him.

There are souls which fall from heaven like flowers, but ere they bloom are crushed under the foul tread of some brutal hoof.

If self-knowledge is the road to virtue, so is virtue still more the road to self-knowledge.

Because the heart beats under a covering of hair, of fur, feathers, or wings, it is, for that reason, to be of no account?

What makes old age so sad is, not that our joys, but that our hopes then cease.

Despair is the only genuine atheism.