The decent moderation of today will be the least of human things tomorrow. At the time of the Spanish Inquisition, the opinion of good sense and of the good medium was certainly that people ought not to burn too large a number of heretics; extreme and unreasonable opinion obviously demanded that they should burn none at all.

Many a happiness in life, a many a disaster, is due to chance alone; but the peace within us can never be governed by chance.

If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live.

You do well to have visions of a better life than of every day, but it is the life of every day from which the elements of a better life must come.

Physical suffering apart, not a single sorrow exists that can touch us except through our thoughts.

The value of ourselves is but the value of our melancholy and our disquiet.

Sacrifice may be a flower that virtue will pluck on its road, but it was not to gather this flower that virtue set forth on its travels.