A straight oar looks bent in the water. It matters not merely that we see a thing, but how we see it.

Nature should have been pleased to have made this age miserable, without making it also ridiculous.

A man must live in the world and make the best of it, such as it is.

An ancient father says that a dog we know is better company than a man whose language we do not understand.

All permanent decisions are made in a temporary state of mind.

It is a thorny undertaking, and more so than it seems, to follow a movement so wandering as that of our mind, to penetrate the opaque depths of its innermost folds, to pick out and immobilize the innumerable flutterings that agitate it.

The general order of things that takes care of fleas and moles also takes care of men, if they will have the same patience that fleas and moles have, to leave it to itself.