If the thing is impossible, you need not trouble yourselves about it; if possible, try for it.

Every great man is always being helped by everybody, for his gift is to get good out of all things and all persons.

Absolute ugliness is admitted as rarely as perfect beauty; but degrees of it more or less distinct are associated with whatever has the nature of death and sin, just as beauty is associated with what has the nature of virtue and of life.

Bread of flour is good; but there is bread, sweet as honey, if we would eat it, in a good book.

You should read books like you take medicine, by advice, and not by advertisement.

There are no laws by which we can write Iliads.

It is only by labour that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought that labour can be made happy, and the two cannot be separated with impunity.