What by a straight path cannot be reached by crooked ways is never won.

Love, whose power youth feels, is not suitable for the elderly, just as little as anything that presupposes productivity. It is rare that productivity lasts through the years.

It is belief in the Bible, the fruits of deep meditation, which has served me as the guide of my moral and literary life. I have found capital safely invested and richly productive of interest, although I have sometimes made but a bad use of it.

Certain books seem to be written, not that we might learn from them, but in order that we might see how much the author knows.

Fortunately, we can take in only so much misfortune; what exceeds that limit either destroys us or leaves us indifferent.

The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.

The old lose one of the greatest privileges of man, for they are no longer judged by their contemporaries.